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Waldo, Howard Lansing, 1852 
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God is writing a book 








Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/godiswritingoookOOwald 


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GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


HOWARD L. WALDO 





Craters and evidences of volcanic action on the surface of the 
moon. The surface of the earth resembled this in pre-geologic 
ages. Photograph by courtesy of Mount Wilson Solar Observa- 
tory, Carnegie Institute, Washington. 


Qn | 
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God Is Writing a... 
Book 


HOWARD L.’ WALDO, M.D. 





DORRANCE ¢ COMPANY 
PHILADELPHIA 


COPYRIGHT 1925 
DORRANCE & CO INC 


MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


To the Memory of My Daughter 


BERTHA WALDO VAN BLARCOM 


Who is “ Among the Seraphs, Round About 
God’s Throne” 


Thanks are due to D. Appleton and Company for per- 
mission to use material from The Earth’s Beginning by 
Robert S. Ball, Evolution and Religious Thought and 
Elements of Geology by Joseph LeConte, and The Ice 
Age in America by G. F. Wright; to Doubleday, Page 
and Company for quotations from Astronomy for 
Everybody by Simon Newcomb; to Ginn and Company 
for permission to use excerpts from Ancient Times, a 
History of the Early World by James Henry Breasted, 
and Lessons in Astronomy by Charles A. Young; to 
MacMillan and Company for permission to quote from 
God, the Invisible King and The Outline of History by 
H. G. Wells; to Charles Scribner’s Sons for material 
from Men of the Old Stone Age and Origin and Evolu- 
tion of Life by H. G. Osborne. 


PREFACE 


The author of the following pages does not claim that 
they contain any original ideas. Whatever ideas they may 
contain have been gleaned from many sources, the result 
of a course of reading which covers a period of many 
years; and the writer is unable, after such a lapse of 
time, to tell, in many instances, the source from which a 
particular thought has been derived. 

By reading and re-reading the inspirations of a favorite 
author and pondering upon his philosophy, his ideas 
eventually become your own, a part of your mental and 
spiritual life. A man who for years has made a practice 
of marking all the striking passages in all the books he 
reads, and frequently recording in his notes the ideas 
which these passages suggest, though not always exactly 
copying what he reads, may transcribe his notes and fail 
to recognize or remember the source from which they 
came. So, if anyone detects plagiarism in these pages, the 
author will plead guilty in advance. 

The author is deeply indebted to the writings of Dar- 
win, Tyndal, Huxley, LeConte, Arrhenius, Breasted, 
Professor Charles A. Young, Simon Newcomb, H. G. 
Wells, Sir Robert S. Ball, Henry Drummond, O. M. 
Mitchell, Sir Oliver Lodge, Henry F. Osborne, J. H. 
Fabre, G. Frederick Wright, John Fiske, Chalmers Mit- 
chell, Emerson, Croll, Roosevelt, Sir John Lubbock, Car- 
lyle, Lecky, Biblical writers and others, for the ideas 
which he has tried to absorb and make his own, and which 
he has here endeavored to express. He has not been a 
reader of infidel or atheistic literature, and is not familiar 
with the mental attitude of those who scoff at religion and 
the teachings of the Bible. He has felt for many years 
that religion, which is simply love and veneration for the 


PREFACE 


Creator and love of mankind, must be stripped of the 
confusions of theology, which have been taught and sub- 
scribed to for many centuries, before it can accomplish its 
great work, the comfort and elevation of man and his 
release from the superstitions which he has inherited from 
his remotest ancestry. 

Few people think on religious matters; they take their 
religion, with its theological encumbrances, as it is given 
to them by the clergy, with the assurance that hell and 
damnation will be the everlasting portion of those who 
disbelieve or reject. Religion and theology have thus 
become one and inseparable, and must be accepted or re- 
jected as such, the individual assuming the consequences 
of his choice. 

It is a quite recent notion, and one not generally held, 
that a man may see God in the stars and clouds and 
storms, in the ocean and forests and extended landscapes, 
in the mountains and in the flocks and herds, and in the 
faces of men and women and innocent children. That 
man may adore the God who made all these things, love 
Him and his fellow man, and devote a life of strenuous 
service to those who are weak and sick, vicious and igno- 
rant, unfortunate and filthy, and still not be a depraved 
sinner, although he feels no need of a Savior and is not 
conscious of guilt. If his life conforms to the highest 
standard of his generation he is not worried about his 
future state. When his pastor or his bishop or the pope 
announces “Thus saith the Lord,” he is likely to remark, 
“Ts that so? How did you hear of it? ‘Lord, who shall 
abide in Thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in Thy holy 
hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteous- 
ness, and speaketh the truth in his heart; he that back- 
biteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbor, 
nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor; in whose 
eyes a vile person is contemned, but he honoreth them that 
fear the Lord. He that sweareth to his own hurt and 


PREFACE 


changeth not. He that putteth not out his money to 
usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that 
doeth these things shall never be moved. He that hath 
clean hands and a pure heart’ shall see God.” 

A man may be guilty of stinginess, intemperance, anger, 
cruelty, laziness, be both a physical and moral coward with 
affection for still other vices, and still not hate God. He 
may even yet strive by all means in his power to escape 
from these vices, and attain unto the clean hands and 
pure heart which will enable him to see God. 

What is said about the church in these pages must not 
be construed as an attack, for it is not; simply a few facts 
have been stated—a very few; many more of the same 
sort might have been mentioned. 

There is no reason why the truth should not be stated. 
History should neither be suppressed nor falsified. It 
is no disgrace to an individual that improprieties and 
brutalities were practiced or even tolerated by his for- 
bears, so long as he does not practice or tolerate them. 
It is no disgrace to an organization that its founders and 
early adherents were guilty of practices which we, in 
these enlightened days, condemn. 

Man is a religious animal; he cannot live without re- 
ligion, but that religion must be adapted to his growing 
intelligence, and must conform to the scientific knowledge 
of the age, or it will not be acceptable. Religions die hard, 
and advancing civilizations have ever been hampered 
with theologies that had outlived their usefulness and are 
out of harmony with the culture and intelligence of the 
times. Our own age is no exception. There are more 
educated people now than ever before; more who are able 
and inclined to judge of the reasonableness of a dogma, 
and who will not accept a faith which does not appeal to 
their common sense, or which is antagonistic to the 
demonstrated facts of science. 

It is desirable above all things that men should have 


PREFACE 


a religion by which they may live and die, which may 
guide them to the truth, and which may be readjusted 
from time to time to conform to the new truths which 
science may reveal to men. There is no impiety in this 
revision of creeds, and it should be done without conflict 
or bitterness. Where is there a better place to learn 
the truth than in the book which God is writing? and is 
it not high time that men should read and believe that 
book? 

Science and religion should be one; there can be no 
conflict between them if both are true, and, if there is 
not complete agreement, both should be carefully ex- 
amined for errors, which should be as promptly and 
honestly eliminated from the one as from the other. 

It is pitiful to see men bound by ancient creeds, afraid 
to enjoy the overflowing bounty which God has given 
them for fear they may offend Him, afraid to question 
the authority or sanctity of their creeds for fear of draw- 
ing down upon themselves the wrath of an offended God. 
When we criticise the church we do not mean its humble 
and devout members; they are the victims of ignorance, 
superstition and fear, and, in general, are doing the best 
they know. It is the organization which holds them in 
bondage that is to be held to account before the intelli- 
gence of coming centuries. 

We know so little of the political and social evolution 
of the Far East that no account has been taken of it in 
these pages. It would seem that Europe and America 
furnish all the material for lessons along these lines that 
is needed. 

We have good reason to believe that China, up to the 
fourteenth century or later, was possessed of a culture 
far in advance of any that existed elsewhere, after the 
decay of Greek and Roman culture in the fifth century 
A.D. The Chinese early developed a code of manners 
which indicated a refinement of sentiment and an appre- 


PREFACE 


ciation of the rights of and respect due to others which 
we of the twentieth century might copy with advantage. 
They were centuries in advance of Europe in their de- 
velopment of the arts of agriculture, pottery making and 
painting, and probably had developed, in a crude way, 
the art of printing and the manufacture of gunpowder. 

Why did not China continue to lead the world in the 
arts, sciences and refinements of civilization? Perhaps 
the answer is not hard to find. Her religion has been 
a veneration and worship of her ancestors; what was 
good enough for her grandfather was good enough for 
her. There was little in the teachings of Confucius to 
encourage a desire for change, and for centuries a liberal 
education in China has consisted almost solely of an 
ability to read, and the memorizing of innumerable pages 
of Chinese classics. The written language of the Chinese 
is so complicated that it is the labor of a lifetime to learn 
to read, write and memorize the classics, leaving no time 
for original thought and philosophizing. 


Troy, N. Y. Howarp L. WALDo. 


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GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 





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CHAP TE Rat 


God is writing a book. He has been writing it for 
countless millenniums, and will continue to write for 
countless millenniums. The book will never be com- 
pleted, for, as God had no beginning, so He will have no 
ending; and He will continue to record His wonderful 
works in His book throughout eternity. God is in no 
hurry to complete His records and does not desire that 
men shall read them until the fulness of time. Thousands 
of pages in this book were written before men appeared 
on this planet, and only a few of them has man so far 
attempted to read. The very existence of these pages is 
one of man’s quite recent discoveries. 

A peculiarity of this book, in which it differs from all 
others, is that it is entirely true. It contains no errors. 
The best and wisest men have frequently fallen into error 
in the books which they have written. They have un- 
intentionally distorted facts and drawn erroneous con- 
clusions, but God never mis-states a fact or makes an 
error in recording the progress of His work, and unlike 
man, He never speculates or draws conclusions. 

His book will never be revised. It will stand forever 
as it is written. 

Few men know of its existence and fewer care to read 
it. Some of its pages lie open for whosoever has eyes 
and a heart to learn; but some of its pages are covered 
deep under the mountains and the oceans, and some are 

13 


14 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


hidden among the stars, to be read only by those who are 
hungering and thristing for knowledge, willing to devote 
their lives to the search for truth as written by God. 

Many of its pages are bound up with the history and 
literature of the human race, and can only be identified 
and separated from the pages written by man by those 
who have spiritual discernment and are willing and able 
to read and believe God’s book rather than the writings 
of fellow mortals. 

Some of its pages are written on the minds and hearts 
of men and women and children, and may be discerned 
in the great social, political and religious movements of 
human history. 

It may thus be seen that God uses all sorts of material 
on which to write, and the implement with which He 
writes is ever varying. He is writing all around us every 
day, but we do not often see His message, and when we 
see it we frequently refuse to read. 

Poor, ignorant, stupid man must learn to read, for only 
by so doing can he become wise. And as he reads, those 
truths which were once obscure will become clear. 

When the little child learns first to read, he cannot 
understand all that wise men write; but as the years go 
by and he perseveres, these obscure passages become clear 
to his growing mind. So he who is learning to read God’s 
book must at first laboriously spell it out, often without 
understanding ; but if he will patiently strive to learn and 
comprehend, he will more and more appreciate the great 
book which God is writing. He can never, in this world, 
comprehend it all. God is infinite and His book is in- 
finite, and it will require eternity and an infinite mind to 
understand Him and His book. 

Let us learn to read this book as best we may, and ac- 
cept its teachings though they may not always confirm 
the teachings of men and though they may destroy ven- 
erable superstitions which have been dear to us and to our 
ancestors. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 15 


Let us never forget that what is written in this book 
is true, and that all truth is divine; there is no such dis- 
tinction as secular truth and divine truth. 

God’s book records the things which He has been doing 
for ages past, although perhaps not all that He has done. 
Some of its pages, probably many of them, are so far 
beyond our comprehension that we can never know of 
their existence while we remain in this tabernacle, and it 
may be one of the occupations of eternity to find them 
out and read them. 

Besides being a record of God’s activities, this book 
tells us of His laws, which do not change. They not only 
govern this earth in the minutest detail, but the universe 
of which this planet is an infinitesimal part. 

When created beings break God’s laws the penalty is 
sure. The fact that the disobedience was due entirely to 
ignorance does not affect the punishment in any par- 
ticular; therefore a knowledge of God’s laws is of more 
importance than any other knowledge, and can be ob- 
tained only by reading God’s book. While sages and holy 
men of ages past have been able to read occasional pages 
of this book, and have had faint conceptions of the mag- 
nitude and importance of the volume from which these 
pages were taken, mankind as yet is only commencing its 
study and has not even learned its entire alphabet. 

Science, which, if genuine, is a search for truth, is 
slowly picking out the words and arranging the pages, so 
that future generations may read more easily and more 
correctly. 

“Science consists of the body of well ascertained and 
verified facts and laws of Nature. It is clearly to be 
distinguished from the mass of theories, hypotheses and 
opinions which are of value in the progress of science.” 4 

In reading this book whose author is God, the wisest 
men are often unable to translate it or comprehend its 
meaning, and some are unwilling to admit that there is 


1 The Origin and Evolution of Life, H. G. Osborne, p. 1. 


16 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


anything written at all, or that God delivers any message 
except by direct communication through the minds and 
writings of men. 

His book is a revelation of God written by Himself, 
and, as studied and translated in recent centuries, enables 
us to know some things of His majesty and greatness and 
power which were not revealed to the men of former 
days. 

Boe the Naamathite voiced the conviction of his 
age when he said: “Canst thou by searching find out 
God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? 
It is as high as Heaven, what canst thou do? Deeper than 
Hell, what canst thou know? The measure thereof is 
longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.” 

Truly, many of the ways of God are past finding out. 
His ways are not as our ways nor His thoughts as our 
thoughts, but we should strive to learn to read His book, 
for therein we find many things written about His ways 
and thoughts and laws which were past finding out in 
the days of Zophar, but which now are so plainly written 
that he who runs may read them if he will. 

While mortal man, immortal if you please, will never 
know the ‘Almighty to perfection,’ he may find out so 
much of Him as to be able to worship Him in spirit and 
in truth, if not indeed the whole truth. 

The heights of heaven were inaccessible to Zophar the 
Naamathite, and he supposed they would always remain 
beyond the ken of man, but modern science has scaled 
heights and penetrated depths to immeasurable distances ; 
has determined the motions and sizes and weights and 
chemical compositions of many stars in the firmament, 
and is continually adding to our knowledge. 


Edward Everett, in an oration at the dedication of 
Dudley Observatory, Albany, said, “From more than 
two hundred observatories in Europe and America the 
glorious artillery of science is nightly assaulting the skies” 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 7 


and is gaining wonderful triumphs in those glittering 
fields. 

Science has penetrated deeply into the structure of 
our globe, and has learned many things about its history 
which take us back millions of years before the days of 
Zophar,—things which are so plainly written in this book 
of God’s that no one can misunderstand. 

When Zophar told Job that the measure of God was 
longer than the earth and broader than the sea, he had no 
conception of the greatness of the truth which he was 
stating. He supposed that this infinitesimal earth of ours 
was the centre of God’s universe, the special and only 
great object of His care: that the sun and moon and stars 
revolved about it to give it light and heat, created solely 
for its benefit. 

When he stated that God was bigger than the earth 
and sea, he had stretched his imagination to its utmost 
limit and he supposed that man could go no farther. But 
by searching, man has gone infinitely farther, and will 
continue to advance and learn of God as long as it shall 
please God to leave him upon His footstool. 

The Hebrew poets and seers had a poetical conception 
of the wisdom and majesty and power of God, but they 
knew so little, in detail, of His works and laws that their 
writings must today be classed as poetical fictions, though 
poetry and fiction of the sublimest order. 

Dogmatists have ever discouraged and often forbidden 
the reading of God’s book, as they have forbidden the 
reading of many good books written by men, for fear 
that God’s truth might expose the superstitions of ages 
and contradict the dogmas of men. Even the wise and 
good Prophet Isaiah says, “There is no searching of His 
understanding.” —IJsaiah XL: 25. This was a poetical 
truth when it was written, but it is not a scientific truth 
today. 

Man should read God’s book in a devout and humble 
spirit, never for a moment forgetting who its author is, 


18 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


and he should announce his interpretations with all 
modesty and reverence, for God’s truth must not be 
twisted to a lie. 

Countless books have been written by men telling us all 
about God: what He thinks, how He feels, what He will 
do, what He regards as sin and what His attitude is 
toward the sinner. They tell us how to determine who 
will be forever blest in the enjoyments of Paradise, and 
who will be forever tormented in the fires of Hell. 
Various methods have been invented by which the guilty 
one may escape the damnation he so richly deserves, and 
reap the rewards of the righteous after having enjoyed 
all the pleasures of sin. 

The men who have written these books and devised 
these schemes of redemption have often been good men 
who verily believed that the truth was in them and that 
they were called of God to “save” the world. Often their 
standards of morality have been high, and the world has 
been immensely benefited by their saintly lives and teach- 
ings, though a major portion of their teachings was mani- 
festly error, the wisdom of man, which is foolishness, 
and not the wisdom of God. 

So far as we can learn, all the civilizations of ancient 
and modern times were largely influenced by the popular 
or current conceptions of the deities. In Greece and 
Rome there were many gods, most of whom were not 
possessed of or influenced by high standards of morality: 
as a consequence, their worshipers were no better than the 
gods of their own making. These gods were simply men 
and women of a larger growth, in whom were found all 
the passions and lusts of mortals. 

It was left to the Hebrews to develop a god of right- 
eousness. The process of his evolution was a slow one. 
Most of their liturgy and ceremonial worship was copied 
from the barbarous tribes about them, and their god in 
early times was a fierce and terrible deity to be feared, 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 19 


and only propitiated by the endless taking of life and the 
shedding of rivers of blood. 

This horrible god, who ordered the extermination of 
whole races of people who were no worse than their 
neighbors and the people who were commanded to ex- 
terminate them, was slowly supplanted in the Hebrew 
mind by a god of mercy and justice who would not toler- 
ate iniquity. 

Human sacrifices were common among the tribes in 
Canaan and surrounding countries, and would seem to 
have been almost universal among almost all primitive 
peoples. These human sacrifices were supposed to bring 
general prosperity and cause an abundant harvest. In- 
fluenced by example, Abraham concluded that an angered 
god could be best appeased by the sacrifice of his son 
Isaac. It was perfectly natural that he should relieve 
himself of all responsibility in the matter by asserting that 
he was obeying the command of God, and to this day 
there are good people who try to excuse Abraham for a 
crime which he eventually had not the courage to per- 
petrate, by exonerating him on the grounds he himself 
offers. 

We should not worry about this horrible god of the 
early Hebrews ; he was man-made, and not the One whom 
we adore and Whose book we shall try to study. 

When the Hebrews first grasped the idea of mono- 
theism they clothed God with many, perhaps most, of the 
gross qualities of the heathen gods about them, and eased 
their consciences, after committing the most awful crimes, 
by asserting that they were obeying the God of the Jews. 

The ancient Hebrew literature is rich, exceedingly rich, 
in history and myth, legend and poetry and fiction. When 
the author of the Book of Job had completed his wonder- 
ful poem he had no idea that any future generations 
would consider it an historical document, any more than 
Shakespeare presumed he was writing history when he 
wrote Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or Tennyson when he 


20 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


wrote The Idylls of the King, or Homer when he penned 
his immortal verse. 

It is not to be supposed that whoever wrote the history 
of the creation as contained in the Book of Genesis, had 
any idea that the literary critics of succeeding ages would 
accept it as authentic history, much less as the word of 
God. Until the time of Abraham this book is legend 
and myth, not history. The Book of Jonah is a fine ex- 
ample of the short story, but not of an historical docu- 
ment. 

The Hebrew poets and prophets were men of the high- 
est ideals and great literary gifts, and they often rose 
to the sublimest heights of eloquence. They were men 
of the deepest religious convictions, philosophers and 
seers who were able to penetrate the future because they 
had studied the past and had a correct appreciation of 
moral values. They apprehended the moral laws of the 
universe, and were thus able to predict accurately the re- 
sults of human conduct. But modern theologians have 
attributed to their writings a significance which they 
themselves would never have acknowledged, and claim 
for them an authority which they would have repudiated. 
In so far as they spoke God’s truth and raised the souls 
of men from the contemplation of that which was false 
and earthly and carnal to truth and justice, holiness and 
godliness, they were writing a page in God’s Book. 

What shall we say of Saint Paul? How can we express 
our admiration for his saintly life, his zeal, his enthusiasm 
and his amazing labors in elevating the standards of 
morality and promoting true religion in the hearts of 
men? When he reasoned of righteousness and temper- 
ance and justice it is no wonder that Felix trembled and 
that Festus called him crazy. It seemed to these judges, 
as to some more modern judges, that any man who would 
devote his life to the practice of temperance and justice 
and righteousness must be demented. It was very well 
to extol these virtues in the abstract, but to practice them 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 21 


in the concrete was to them evidence of a diseased mind. 

Paul’s undoubted sincerity, his sure grasp of the highest 
principles of morality, and the living church, of which he 
was the founder, have placed him beyond the range of 
criticism for nearly nineteen hundred years. If it had 
not been for his labors what would have become of the 
early church? What other apostle had the physical 
courage or the mental equipment to face and conquer a 
hostile world? And what would future ages have known 
of Christianity if it had not been for the labors and 
writings and personal zeal of Paul? As the centuries go 
by, his influence is more and more potent for good: as 
men grow wiser and better they more perfectly appreciate 
the perfection of his moral precepts and his interpreta- 
tion of the wonderful teachings and life of Christ, his 
Master. 

If subsequent history has shown that he was in error 
as to the time and manner of the triumph of righteousness 
and its reign upon earth, that in no way reflects upon the 
soundness of his intuition that the time would come when 
righteousness would fill the whole earth, and the King of 
Righteousness should be its ruler. Paul apparently 
thought he knew who that King would be. Perhaps he 
did (?). 

Paul was a man, and like other men was not always able 
to escape or rise above the customs and superstitions of 
his age and the traditions of his elders and associates ; but 
this does not affect the moral character of his work. At 
our distance, and with our opportunities, we can see 
clearly some things that were beyond his vision. Paul 
was a man and wrote and lived as a man, but in his life 
and writings we may clearly discern one of the pages of 
God’s book; such a page as perhaps it has been given to 
no other man to write. 

Theologians and dogmatists have, for these many cen- 
turies, been teaching men that the ancient Hebrew litera- 
ture, the writings of the early Christian church, the writ- 


22 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


ings and traditions of the fathers are the word of God. 
Further than this, these same theologians and dogmatists 
insist that we must accept as the word of God the inter- 
pretations which they have seen fit to make of these writ- 
ings of men. Hell and purgatory are the reward of those 
who refuse to accept the teachings of the church in these 
matters. 

Repudiating its authority and denying the truth of its 
theology we must not forget the wonderful influence for 
good which the church has exercised in the past and is 
exercising today. What could most men and women do 
without their church and their faith? How could they 
endure existence longer if it were destroyed? 

“Strong was he that had a church, what we can call a 
church; he stood thereby, though in the centre of im- 
mensities, in the conflux of eternities, yet manlike to- 
wards God and man; the vague, shoreless Universe had 
become for him a firm city and dwelling which he knew. 
Such virtue was in belief. Well might men prize their 
Credo, and raise stateliest temples for it and reverend 
Hierarchies, and give it the tithe of their substance; it 
was worth living for and dying for.” ? 

Other churches than the Christian church and other re- 
ligions than that championed by Paul have met the needs 
of millions of peoples. 

The pagan Greeks and Romans, while they had count- 
less gods, did not have much religion, and, aside from the 
comforts of philosophy, had not much to live or die by. 

Prince Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, so accu- 
rately divined the needs of the oriental mind and soul that 
to this day about one-third of the human race are content 
to live and die in the Buddhist faith. 

To the practical modern mind the conduct of Gautama 
in forsaking his wife and newborn son to lead the lazy 
life of a ragged tramp, searching for wisdom and light 
by sitting alone in the forests and later engaging in end- 


2 French Revolution, Carlyle. Vol. I, Chap. 11, p. 7. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 23 


less talk with men as lazy and ignorant as himself, seems 
the acme of absurdity, cruelty and heartlessness. He 
forgot his great first duty to his wife and child and left 
them to their fate, that he might lead the life of a mendi- 
cant, eating the food which had been prepared by the 
labor of others, and devoting himself to meditation that 
he might find peace and repose for his own selfish soul. 

Gautama was hailed as the Buddha by his disciples; 
his paternity was not of man, his mother was a vir- 
gin at the time of his birth, having become pregnant 
as the result of a dream. These virgin births are not 
uncommon, even at the present time, as any physician 
having a large general practice can testify. Perhaps 
Gautama wrote a page in God’s book. 

The absolute self-abnegation and limitless love taught 
by Gautama is well illustrated by the following fable: 
“Buddha, incarnated as a hare, jumped into the fire to 
cook himself for a meal for a beggar, having previously 
shaken himself three times, so that none of the insects in 
his fur should perish with him.” 8 

The moral precepts of the wise man Confucius have 
served, to some extent, to keep from putrefaction the 
minds and souls of other millions. It can hardly be said 
that he wrote a page in God’s book—perhaps a line. 

Mahomet, though not a great prophet, did a great work. 
He rescued millions of people from idolatry and nature 
worship, and taught them that there was but one God. 
His teaching was crude, his morality sensual and his ideals 
low, but his religion was better than that which it sup- 
planted, for it was monotheistic. Mahomet was the au- 
thor of a book, but we can concede to it only a small place 
in God’s great book. 

Many other faiths and crude superstitions have held in 
bondage the minds and souls of men. They have been 
largely religions of fear; the earth and the sea, the air and 
the forests have been peopled with demons, to propitiate 


3 Varieties of Religious Experience, William James, p. 283. 


24 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


whom incantations and sacrifices and painful penances and 
often human sacrifices have been thought necessary. 
Mankind has lived in terror of these false gods, the 
creation of his own benighted imagination, “till all the joy 
of living has been quenched by fear.” All the spectacu- 
lar manifestations of Nature—earthquakes, volcanoes, 
cyclones, lightning and thunder, eclipses, and epidemics 
of fatal diseases, have been looked upon as evidences of 
the wrath of the gods. 

God has always been a mystery and always will be, and 
primitive man has always needed a symbol, a temple, or 
a priest, before which and through whom he could ap- 
proach the deity and receive some assurance of acceptance 
and pardon. The utterances of these priests or oracles, 
like the words of wisdom from the oracle at Delphi, have 
always been received with awe and reverence. The tem- 
ples have often been places of asylum to which the 
criminal and the persecuted could flee for safety, and 
within which no physical violence need be feared. The 
offices of priest, medicine man, and physician, were often 
combined in the same individual, who, within the precincts 
of the temple, and before the visible symbols of the deity, 
could drive out the evil spirits which were causing disease, 
and at the same time secure the favor of the god by 
making a suitable offering. In this manner temples often 
became hospitals, and pools of Bethesda held out hope to 
the souls and bodies and minds of suffering sinners. 

False prophets have arisen in every age, who, inspired 
by the lust for power, notoriety or lucre, have not feared 
to speak “in the name of the Lord” for their own personal 
profit. It has been a favorite scheme of these deceivers 
to require of their followers a fairly high standard of 
morals, and to preach a religion more or less spiritual. 
These things serve to blind the eyes of the simple and to 
unloose their purse strings. 

Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, pretended 
to have discovered, by the spirit of God, the Book of 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 25 


Mormon, in a mound in Wayne or Ontario County, in 
the State of New York; it was written on metallic plates 
in an unknown, lost language. This language he was able 
to read by using a pair of spectacles called urim and 
thummim, found in the mound with the plates. Smith 
was manifestly an imposter, though we should not accuse 
all his followers of insincerity, for many of them have 
proven by their lives and their devotion to duty that they 
were above reproach. Their founder inculcated the prac- 
tice of all the virtues and did not tolerate polygamy; the 
latter was the result of a subsequent “revelation” to his 
successor, Brigham Young. 

Mrs. Eddy was, perhaps, the shrewdest of the modern 
false prophets. Under the guise of an unctious sancti- 
moniousness she succeeded in drawing untold wealth from 
the pockets of the simple, and succeeded in convincing 
many people that the testimony of the senses was not to 
be accepted. Like hosts of other freak religions, her 
doctrines are having their day, and soon will be heard of 
no more. 


CHAPTER GIL 


“When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy 
fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, 
what is man that Thou art mindful of him?” 


“Thy throne eternal ages stood 
Ere seas or stars were made; 
Before the hills in order stood 
Or earth received her frame.” 1 


A consideration of the heavens has always been a source 
of inspiration to the devout soul, and the more accurate 
and complete the knowledge of the observer the more is 
he filled with awe and reverence. The Hebrew poet 
knew almost nothing of the bright objects which attracted 
his attention: their distance, size, motions, and composi- 
tion were matters about which he could not possibly have 
any accurate information. Had he known what we do 
about these matters he would certainly have been filled 
with astonishment when told that there are, in these days, 
men who can behold this daily manifestation of the power 
and wisdom and greatness of the Almighty and still not 
bow in reverence, or who can even deny that there is a 
God. 

Most people who believe in God, who admit that He is 
a great God, who will agree that He is all-powerful, still 
have no conception of the greatness of His universe, or 
the vast extent of His power and the splendor of His 
creation. When they admit that He is the God of the 
whole earth and has controlled and will control all its 
destinies through all time, they have about reached the 
limit of their appreciation. The world is slow to realize 


1 Tsaac Watts. 
26 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 27 


that God is writing every day in this great book of His, 
and that man, insignificant and ignorant as he is, may 
read some portions of this book, and, by study, may pro- 
gressively read more and more and understand it better 
and better. 

The idea that our solar system—which includes the 
Sun, Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, about seven 
hundred asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, 
with numerous satellites or moons, and at least some of 
the comets—were all formed by the condensation, contrac- 
tion, and eventual cooling of an immense nebula, was 
original with the great philosopher _ Immanuel Kant, who 
died in 1804. The French mathematician Laplace de- 
veloped this theory still further, which is now generally 
known by his name, Laplace’s Nebular Hypothesis. 
This hypothesis, which is simply the preface to the doc- 
trine of evolution as further developed by the immortal 
Darwin, has been the ground for many a fierce conflict 
between the scientists on one hand and the theologians and 
dogmatists on the other. The latter controversialists have 
not seemed to be able to understand that all truth is 
God’s truth, and that when God writes a chapter in His 
book He is simply recording what He has done and the 
laws by which He operates, making no effort to conform 
to the opinions or dogmas of men. 


“Deep in unfathomable mines 
Of never-failing skill, 
He treasures up His vast designs 
And works His sov’reign will.” 2 


The scientist has been asked many times: “How do 
you know that our solar system developed from a nebula, 
and that suns and planets are now being formed by the 
rotation, condensation and cooling of nebule?” The 
answer has been: “I know it by observation and reflec- 
tion, and I am unable to arrive at any other conclusion.” 


2 Cowper. 


28 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


The familiar illustration of the apple seed and the apple 
tree is perhaps known to all: the apple seed does not look 
very much like the apple tree. If we had had no oppor- 
tunity for observation we should say that they were in 
no way related, and that those “self-styled scientists,” who 
“assumed” that the little apple seed had in it the poten- 
tiality of the matured apple tree with its blossoms and 
fruit, were not entitled to serious consideration. But if 
we will observe and reflect for a few years, we may 
change our minds. If we plant the seed in favorable soil 
and give it light and water, we may soon find the little 
twig sprouting out of the ground, and in a few years we 
are convinced that the growth is an apple tree. If we 
will observe its surroundings carefully we will notice that 
there are other similar twigs and trees in all stages of de- 
velopment, from the smallest sprout to the mature growth, 
to the tree that is dying and that is dead. 

This is exactly what astronomers and other scientists 
have done: they have observed thousands of nebule, at 
least 120,000, and have found them in various stages of 
development from the thinnest gas to an asterial body. 
There is no reason to suppose that these represent all the 
nebulze in the heavens—there is good reason to believe 
that their number is past finding out. Professor Keeler 
found many nebulz revealed on his photographic plates 
that could not be seen through any telescope, their faint- 
ness being due to their great distance and not to their 
small size or lack of luminosity. Sir William Herschel 
was the first astronomer to note carefully the number, 
size and differences in the various nebulz, and to him and 
to his sister science is indebted for much that is now 
known about these wonderful bodies. 

The diameter of the great nebula in Orion is estimated 
at 5,700,000,000,000,000 miles. This figure can mean 
nothing to us, for it is beyond the capacity of the human 


3 The Earth’s Beginning, Sir Robert Ball. Photographs 
on pp. 41, 45 and 71. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 29 


mind to grasp; we can only realize that this nebula is of 
vast extent, and that there are others perhaps equally vast. 

*The great nebula in the constellation Andromeda is 
one of the most interesting and awe-inspiring objects in 
the heavens. 

It is often impossible to distinguish, by the telescope, 
a nebula from a cluster of stars, but this differentiation 
can be made by the spectroscope, and by this means it has 
been found that many nebule are immense bodies of 
incandescent gas. The spectroscope has also shown that 
many, perhaps most, of the chemicals with which we are 
familiar, are to be found in the nebule and in the stars, 
very prominent among which is calcium. So far as 
scientists can discover, we are justified in saying that in 
God’s universe nothing is lost; matter changes its form, 
but never is diminished or lost. If a body is set in motion, 
it will move on forever in a straight line and with its 
original velocity unchanged if it is not influenced by the 
proximity of other bodies. We know that the heavens 
are filled with bodies, great and small, luminous and dark, 
moving in all directions with tremendous velocities, and 
we have reason to believe that collisions occur between 
these great bodies. Such collisions must result in the de- 
velopment of heat sufficient to convert all known sub- 
stances into a vapour: nothing is lost of the substance of 
either of the colliding bodies, but their physical condition 
is altered from a solid to a vapour. 

It has been estimated,® that the nebula from which our 
solar system has been evolved, originally contained en- 
ergy equal to that which would be produced by the com- 
bustion of 8300 globes of solid coal each equal in weight 
to our sun. Not quite half of this energy has been ex- 
pended, but it is being rapidly consumed. 

The sun is contracting at the rate of approximately 200 
feet a year or about 4 miles in a century,® and this 


Hoy x The Earth's Beginning, Sir Robert Ball, pp. 41, 45, 71 
and 350. 
8 Astronomy for Everybody, Simon Newcomb, p. 104. 


30 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


contraction is what enables it to maintain its heat supply.” 
The consequent development of heat will continue until 
all the energy developed in the sun by the cataclysm which 
produced the primeval nebula has been expended, and the 
orb of day has become a solid frozen mass. This will 
not happen in millions of years; the plans of God are 
worked out very slowly, and many things may happen 
before the sun becomes a frozen globe. 

The origin of our solar system may be assumed to have 
been somewhat as follows: § Two bodies of approximately 
equal size, whose combined weight equalled that of our 
entire solar system, and each moving at the rate of 460 
miles per second, came into collision. The result was the 
generation of heat sufficient to convert both bodies into 
a mass of incandescent vapour, the mass, at the same 
time, retaining the combined momentum of both bodies. 
As a further result of this collision, the particles of conse- 
quent nebulous vapour received a tremendous impetus to 
violent motion in every direction, the sum of their com- 
bined momenta exactly equaling the sum of the momenta 
of the two bodies before the collision, as nothing is ever 
lost in God’s universe. It would eventually happen that 
out of all the motions in this nebula one would predomi- 
nate, and finally brings all the other motions to coincide 
with it. When this stage is reached, the entire nebula 
begins to rotate slowly, and eventually assumes the spiral 
form. 

Of 120,000 carefully observed nebulz about one-half 
are spiral, indicating that they have begun to rotate in a 
definite direction and are slowly assuming a definite form. 
The rotating nebulous mass constantly radiates heat, caus- 
ing it to contract as it rotates. This contraction in turn 
develops more heat, so that the mass itself is not neces- 
sarily cooling. When, in the process of its evolution, a 
nebula has reached the spiral stage, it is no longer gaseous 


7 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, p. 168. 
8 The Earth’s Beginning, Sir Robert Ball, p. 352. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 31 


in character, and in many of the spiral nebulz a nucleus, 
sometimes several nucleii may be seen, indicating that the 
process of condensation has so far advanced that a def- 
inite form has been evolved. 

The dimensions of some of these spiral nebule are 
probably millions of times greater than the dimensions of 
the nebula from which our solar system was evolved, and 
it is thinkable that galaxies of stars, instead of one solar 
system, will be the eventual outcome of their evolution. 

Dr. Roberts has been able, by means of the photo- 
graphic plate, to determine the spiral form and develop- 
ment of many nebule that could not have been so classi- 
fied by any other means at present known to science. 

It is one of the laws of momentum that as a nebula 
cools and contracts it must rotate faster and faster, in 
order that the moment of momentum may be maintained. 
This increased rate of rotation leads to the separation or 
throwing off of large masses from its surface, and these 
detached masses revolve about the central mass in the 
same time as the central mass rotates on its axis. 

These detached masses, when first thrown off, rotate 
on their axes in the same time that they revolve about 
the central mass, but as ages go on they contract and cool, 
and as a necessary corollary, rotate faster and faster on 
their axes, while they probably continue to revolve about 
their central sun in the same time as when first detached 
from it.2 It is these detached masses which eventually 
form the planets, which, while their surfaces cool off with 
comparative rapidity, retain an immense volume of heat 
in their interiors, which is slowly radiated. The con- 
traction of the planet produces further heat, so that, for 
a time, though great quantities of heat are radiated, the 
planet does not necessarily grow cooler. 

While these changes are taking place in the planets, the 
central sun is cooling and contracting, and consequently, 
in order to maintain its moment of momentum, it rotates 


9 The Earth’s Beginning, Sir Robert S. Ball, p. 252. 


32 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


on its axis faster and faster. Thus, in our solar system, 
we have the record, if we read God’s book correctly, of | 
the times in which our sun has rotated on its axis at 
different stages of its evolution. 

When the nebula from which our solar system was 
formed extended out as far as the orbit of Neptune, the 
farthest planet, it rotated on its axis once in 165 years. 
When it had contracted to the size of the orbit of Uranus, 
it rotated once in 84 years. When it had contracted to 
the size of the orbit of Saturn, it rotated once in 29.5 
years; to that of Jupiter, once in 11.9 years. When it had 
further contracted to the size of the orbit of Mars, it ro- 
tated once in 1.5 years; to the size of the orbit of the 
Earth, it rotated on its axis in 1 year. When the size 
of the contracting sun was equal to the orbit of Venus, 
it rotated in 714 months, when to the size of the orbit of 
Mercury, in 3 months.1° 

The sun now rotates on its axis in 25 days, 4 hours and 
29 minutes, and the time required is constantly diminish- 
ing as the size of the sun diminishes. Its present 
diameter is about 863,000 miles, and its rate of contrac- 
tion is about 4 miles in a century (some authorities 
think it is contracting about 8 miles in a century) ; 
and it is universally conceded that this contraction is the 
principal cause of the generation of solar heat, although 
the constant collision of the sun with meteors or shooting 
stars is another source of heat development which should 
not be overlooked. The number of these meteors is in- 
calculable, though of course most of them are not of very 
great size if we may judge by those which have fallen on 
the earth. While the energy of the sun is constantly be- 
ing exhausted, the process is so slow that no appreciable 
diminution has been detected since scientists have known 
how to estimate its various manifestations of power. 

It has been calculated, probably with considerable ac- 


10 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, p. 189. 
11 The Earth's Beginning, Sir Robert Ball, p. 237. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 33 


curacy, that the contraction of our nebula down to the 
present bulk of the sun would develop 270,000 times as 
much heat as would be needed to raise a volume of water 
the size of the sun from freezing to boiling point.!? 

Various estimates have been made as to the probable 
time that will elapse before the sun will become so cold 
and non-luminous that it will be unable to maintain suffi- 
cient heat and light for the maintenance of animal and 
vegetable life on this planet.1% Professor Young esti- 
mates that 10,000,000 years will probably be the limit. 

The density of the sun, which was originally so low as 
to be an almost negligible quantity, is slowly approaching 
that of the earth. If the density of the earth is repre- 
sented by 5, that of the sun may be represented by 1.4. 
The outer parts of the sun are simply vapor or clouds 
and incandescent gases, but towards its centre the pres- 
sure of its enormous mass has solidified these gases. 

In the days of Zophar the Naamathite, nothing was 
known of chemistry and such bodies as nebule were not 
known to exist, and Zophar was unable to understand that 
any means could ever be devised by which man would 
know the nature of the points of light which he saw in 
the heavens. The spectroscope has enabled scientists to 
determine with considerable accuracy the composition of 
the heavenly bodies, and it has been found that the 
nebulz, the stars and the sun contain no elements not 
found also on this earth: thus God has written in His 
book that His universe is one in reality: one in composi- 
tion and one in the laws which govern it. 

The heat contained in the sun is so great that it con- 
tains no chemical compounds; each element exists by it- 
self in the form of gas, showing no disposition to unite 
with any other. The number of elements found is about 
80. The element helium was first discovered in the sun 
by means of the spectroscope, and for a long time was not 


12 The Earih’s Beginning, Sir Robert Ball, p. 109. 
13 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, p. 169. 


34 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


known to exist anywhere else in the universe, but by and 
by it was found in clevite, discovered in Norway. 

The solar spectrum and the spectra of nebulze show the 
presence of calcium in abundance. Calcium is also present 
in numerous combinations in our planet. 

Carbon is abundant in the sun, as is shown by the solar 
spectrum, and in an incandescent condition is the source 
of the light and heat which are radiated.1* 

Immense tongues of flaming hydrogen gas, and calcium 
and magnesium heated to the point of vaporization, com- 
plete the greater portion of the composition of the sun 
which we see. Of course the vast interior is hidden from 
our gaze. 

Violent explosions are constantly occurring from the 
body of the sun and immense masses are thrown out to 
great distances, and the theory has been advanced that 
these masses may be the comets which revolve about the 
sun in such enormous and peculiar orbits, and which 
sometimes leave our solar system, apparently never to 
return. 

Various attempts have been made to illustrate the com- 
parative sizes of the earth, planets and sun, and their 
comparative distances from each other and from the uni- 
verse about us. Perhaps the illustration given by Sir John 
Herschel and quoted by Young! is as correct and strik- 
ing as any that we shall find: “Choose any well-levelled 
field. On it place a globe two feet in diameter. This 
will represent the sun. Mercury will be represented by 
a grain of mustard seed whose orbit is the circumference 
of a circle 164 feet in diameter, Venus, a pea on a circle 
284 feet in diameter; the Earth, also a pea on a circle 430 
feet in diameter; Mars, a large pin’s head on a circle 654 
feet in diameter; the asteroids, grains of sand on orbits 
having a diameter of 1000 to 1200 feet; Jupiter, a mod- 
erate sized orange on a circle nearly half a mile across; 


14 The Earth’s Beginning, Sir Robert Ball, pp. 69, 73. 
15 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, p. 204. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 35 


Saturn, a small orange on a circle four-fifths of a mile 
across; Uranus, a full-sized cherry or small plum on the 
circumference of a circle more than a mile in diameter, 
and finally Neptune, a good sized plum on a circle about 
two and a half miles in diameter.” Professor Young adds 
that “fon this scale, the nearest star would be 8,000 miles 
away.” 

Professor Newcomb gives an equally striking illustra- 
tion: let the earth be represented by a grain of mustard 
seed, and the sun by a large apple at a distance of 40 feet; 
the other planets would range in size from invisible par- 
ticles to a pea, at distances ranging from 10 feet to a 
quarter of a mile. Outside of this small area there would 
be a space as large as the whole continent of America 
which would contain no object except the wandering me- 
teors.16 


16 Astronomy for Everybody, Simon Newcomb, pp. 7-8. 


CEA een 


God moves and works by laws, and in no other way 
does He work out the great problems of His universe. 
Nothing goes by chance and nothing is forgotten, and, at 
the appointed time, everything works out according to the 
original design. God is never in a hurry; a thousand 
years or a million years are but as one day or a watch in 
the night. No one can compute the millions of years that 
it has taken for our solar system to evolve from the 
primeval nebula to its present maturity, and no one can 
compute the centuries that will be required for the human 
race to evolve to that state of moral perfection towards 
which it is slowly but surely moving. 

One of God’s most obvious laws is the law of growth; 
everything grows, from the smallest and most imperfect 
beginning until the perfection designed has been reached, 
and then it grows old, declines and dies. 

Our solar system has evolved from chaos to the or- 
derly and symmetrical arrangement which science has re- 
vealed to us in these later centuries. Our earth has 
grown through countless zons of time from a molten, 
plastic mass of matter to a suitable sojourning place for 
humanity. The time will come when life can no longer 
be sustained on this planet, when it will have served its 
purpose in the great plan of God. What its ultimate 
destiny will be we know not. 

Man has developed from a beast, through countless 
millenniums, into a physical being endowed with an intel- 
lect of wonderful power, but his moral nature has not yet 
developed much beyond that of the beast from which he 
sprang. But God’s law of growth and progress never 
fails, and the time will come when men will live on this 

36 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 37 


earth under conditions of ideal moral and physical per- 
fection, in spite of the theologians and dogmatists and 
their devil. 

God is no economist as men count economy; He has 
plenty of time and is in no hurry: eternity will be soon 
enough for Him to complete any of His undertakings. 
Neither is God economical in His use of material; He 
does not hesitate to throw away, so far as we can see, 
thousands of His most perfect creatures, in the working 
out of what seems to us a small and simple problem. His 
ways are not as our ways. He has plenty of material, 
plenty of time, and He does not need an efficiency ex- 
pert to show Him a better way. 

Every step in the evolution of civil or religious liberty 
has been marked by the blood of thousands of human 
victims, and we are reminded that eternal vigilance and 
eternal conflict are the price of freedom. This law of 
battle, the survival of the fittest, seems to be fundamental 
in the vegetable, animal, intellectual, moral and spiritual 
kingdoms. 

Evolution, which means development as defined by 
Lamarck and Darwin, is a fact accepted by all scientists 
today, and may be accepted as one of the laws of God. 
Perhaps all the rules which govern it are not yet formu- 
lated or understood, but little by little man will find them 
out. 

The laws of physics, the laws which govern the trans- 
mission of light and heat, and inferentially the laws of 
sound, and the laws which govern moving bodies, apply 
not only on this planet but throughout all God’s universe 
with no variations or exceptions. It is impossible for the 
ordinary mind, with only the training given by the cur- 
riculum of the modern university, to comprehend how 
such scientists as Kepler and Newton, Leverrier, Galle 
and Galileo were able to discover the laws governing the 
movements of heavenly bodies, and, having found them, 
to apply them with such unerring results. But the testi- 


38 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


mony of scientists is sufficient to establish both the truth 
of these laws and the correctness of the conclusions drawn 
from them. 

Kepler’s first law is: Planets revolve in elliptic orbits 
about the sun, which occupies the common focus of all 
their orbits. 

Kepler’s second law is: Jf a line be drawn from the 
centre of the sun to any planet, this line, as tt is carried 
forward by the planet in its revolution, will sweep over 
equal areas in equal times. 

Kepler’s third law is: The square of the period of one 
planet is to the square of the period of another planet, as 
the cube of the distance of the first planet from the sun, 
is to the cube of the distance of the second planet from 
the sun. 

These laws were finally worked out by Kepler after 
years of study and computations, disappointments and 
failures, and the final triumph was delayed by errors in 
his reckonings. 

Kepler was unable to explain the reasons for these laws 
which he had discovered, but when Sir Isaac Newton 
made his great discovery of the laws of gravitation, all 
was explained. Newton’s laws explain all the motions 
of the heavenly bodies, enable science to predict those 
motions for centuries to come, and to tell what those mo- 
tions have been in the remote past. 

Sir Isaac Newton’s laws may be stated as follows: 

First: If a body situated in space, free to move, be 
given an impulse sufficient to start it in motion, ut will 
continue to move in a straight line, and with an unchanged 
velocity forever, tf 1t be not affected by some other body. 

Second: An alteration of motion ts always m propor- 
tion to the force impressed upon the moving body, and ts 
in the direction of a straight line in which that force ts 
applied. 

Third: Action and reaction are always equal. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 39 


Perhaps the most important of Newton’s laws was the 
following :4 

Every particle of matter attracts every other particle 
of matter in the universe with a force directly proportional 
to the quantity of matter in each and decreasing as the 
square of the distance which separates them increases. 

These laws were not made by Kepler and Newton; they 
were laws of God, and they were “found out by search- 
ing.” They had been laws through an eternal past, and 
will remain laws through an eternal future. 

Philosophers and theologians were no more ready to 
accept the truth in Newton’s time than they are today, 
and Newton was accused of everything except a love of 
truth and the possession of a scientific mind. Liebnitz 
accused him of introducing occult qualities and miracles 
into philosophy, and asserted that his? “laws of gravita- 
tion were subversive of natural and revealed religion.” 

There is a law governing the distances of the planets 
from the sun which is called ? Bode’s law, for the astrono- 
mer who discovered it. What reason there is in dynamics 
for the existence of this law is not known, but its existence 
is another proof of the orderly arrangement of the uni- 
verse, showing that things are not going haphazard, as 
we are sometimes disposed to think, but are following an 
orderly plan and moving steadily toward a definite end. 

Bode’s law is as follows: * Take the numbers 0, 3, 6, 
12, etc., doubling each as we go along. Then add 4 to 
each number and we shall very nearly find the scale of 
the distances of all the planets from the sun, except 
Neptune. The distance of the earth from the sun is taken 
as the unit of measure, consequently the figures in the 
following table are divided by ten, by placing a decimal 
point at the left of the right-hand figure. 


1 Astronomy for Everybody, Simon Newcomb, p. 154. 
2 Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, p. 496. 
3 and 4 Astronomy for Everybody, Simon Newcomb, p. 154. 


40 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


Mercury .. 0+4= .4 Actual distance from sun .4 
VW Entis ih Woes ea eon tS SAS et Od: 
Earth wows. 6+-4—> 10 :* y af ah tree 
Mars iene. L 2h a LO ee SE Ooted te BL} 
Asteroids... 24+4—= 28 “ Y iy “ 2.0 to 4.0 
Jupiter ....48+4= 52 “ arte Wage Fl 4 
Saturn .... 96 +4= 100. “ y ap i ust Aa 
Uranus 192 +4=196 “ A i * 19,2 
Neptune ..384 + 4= 388 “ ‘ ei Wa ee) 


By taking these distances as found in Bode’s law, and 
applying to them Kepler’s third law, we can find how long 
it will take each planet to revolve in its orbit around the 
sun.> “Suppose one planet to be four times as far from 
the sun as another. It will then be eight times as long 
going around it. This number is reached by taking the 
cube of four, which is sixty-four, and then extracting the 
square root, which is eight.” 

When the outer planets, like Neptune and Uranus, were 
thrown off from the primeval nebula, the nebula was ro- 
tating slowly, and these planets have maintained the same 
rate of motion as was imparted to them at that time. So 
these outer planets not only have much farther to go in 
their orbits about the sun, but they move much more 
slowly, it requiring Neptune about 164 years to complete 
the revolution. 

Anyone who has watched a grindstone, to which an 
abundance of water has been applied, turning rapidly, has 
observed that the drops of water which fly off from its 
circumference revolve in the same plane as the stone re- 
volves; so the planets thrown off by the great rotating 
nebula, revolve in nearly the same plane as the equator 
of the nebula. 

The plane of the earth’s orbit is called the ecliptic, and 
all the planets and all their satellites, with the exception 
of the satellites of Uranus and Neptune, revolve in planes 
very closely approximated to the ecliptic.® The plane of 


5 Astronomy for Everybody, Simon Newcomb, p. 156. 
6 The Earth’s Beginning, Sir Robert S. Ball, p. 208. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 4I 


the orbit of Mercury is inclined seven degress to the plane 
of the ecliptic, and this is the greatest inclination of any 
of the orbits of the planets. 

Of the seven hundred asteroids, seventy-five per cent. 
of the orbits have inclinations of less than ten degrees. 
As these asteroids perhaps represent an exploded planet, 
or else were thrown off from their central mass under 
evidently peculiar conditions, it is not strange that the 
planes of their orbits should not yet coincide with the 
ecliptic. They, as well as all the planets, will gradually 
approach the same plane, as the laws of mometum and 
gravitation admit of no other result. The satellites of 
Uranus and Neptune will slowly work around to the same 
plane. 

It is to be further noticed that the planets and satellites 
not only revolve about the sun in very nearly the same 
plane, but all of them also in the same direction, and the 
axis of the sun is nearly perpendicular to the plane of the 
ecliptic. All of these facts seem to point to the truth 
of the nebular hypothesis. 

While most of the comets revolve about the sun, none 
of them show any tendency to conform their orbits to 
the plane of the ecliptic; seeming to indicate that they 
originated from explosions in the body of the sun and 
were thrown out in various directions wherever the force 
of the explosion was pointed, and were not, like the 
planets, separated from the central mass by the centrifugal 
force developed by its rotation. 

While the laws of momentum and gravitation require 
that the planes of the orbits of all the planets and all their 
satellites must eventually coincide, making one common 
plane, the time required to bring this about is beyond our 
power to compute. 

It must be remembered that the planets are not only 
attracted by the sun according to the laws of gravitation, 
but that they influence each other directly in proportion 
to their mass and inversely as the square of the distance 


42 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


which separates them increases. These latter influences 
cause all the planets and satellites to change their courses 
more or less. Elliptical orbits grow more and more 
elliptical, and then slowly change their shape until they 
become nearly circular, until at some remote period mil- 
lions of years in the future, they will all be in the same 
relative position that they are at present. This is one of 
the great clocks of eternity which is marking off the time 
for God. 

The earth, in its journey round the sun, is being con- 
stantly drawn out of the plane of the ecliptic by the moon, 
and is often some hundreds of miles either above or below 
that plane; she sways from side to side much as a drunken 
man oscillates from side to side on a narrow sidewalk 
which he is trying to follow. 

Astronomy has cognizance of eight planets; probably 
there are no more, though it has been hinted that there 
might be a small planet revolving inside the orbit of 
Mercury. Between Mars and Jupiter there are about 
seven hundred little planets, called asteroids, which be- 
have in all respects like planets. 

The following table, copied and adapted from Young,’ 
gives at a glance the principal data relating to the planets: 


Distance in 


Astronomical 

Units from Periods of 

the Sun Revolution Diameter Number of Moons 
MEROURY...- 0.43 months 8,000 miles None 
VENUS Ue cles s 0.7 7% months 7,700 miles None 
HARTGE sictelacste ILeyvear 7,918 miles One 
MABS i eitis es 1.5 1 yr., 10 mos. 4,200 miles Two 
ASTEROIDS... 38. 3 yrs. to9 yrs. 10 to 500 miles None discovered 
JUNITER....-. 5.211.9 years 86,000 miles Hight 
SATUEN..... 9.529.5 years 73,000 miles Ten and 8 rings 
UWRBANUSH ine 19.2 84 years 82,000 miles Four 
NEPTUNE.... 30.1164.8 years 85,000 miles One 


The moon, which accompanies our earth on its journey 
through space, is about 238,840 miles away, the distance 
varying a little from time to time. It seems probable that 


7 Astronomy for Everybody, Simon Newcomb, p. 244. 
8 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, p. 189. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 43 


the moon did not separate from the earth until the mass 
had cooled to a plastic or semi-solid state, and its surface 
consequently soon became rigid, so that its bulk did not 
decrease much as the cooling process continued. The 
moon, therefore, continues to rotate upon its axis in es- 
sentially the same time as its mother earth was rotating 
at the time of the satellites’ birth—that is, in the exact 
time that it performs its revolution about the earth. As 
a result the moon always shows the same surface to the 
earth.® 

It seems probable that the moon revolves about the 
earth in a shorter period now than in the time of the 
Babylonian astronomers. This seems to be indicated by 
the records of eclipses, and is corroborated by Arabian 
astronomers in their ancient records, and in the middle 
ages. 

The orbit of the earth’s revolution is slowly changing 
from an ellipse and approaching the form of a circle. 
After millions of years it will slowly change back again 
to the more pronounced elliptical form, and this explains 
the change in the time of the revolution of the moon 
about the earth. 

In 3,000 years the moon has advanced four of her 
diameters beyond the point where she would be had there 
been no acceleration of her speed. This acceleration will 
continue as long as the orbit of the earth continues to 
change toward the form of the circle; but when the limit 
of circularity has been reached the earth’s orbit will 
slowly become elliptical, and at the same time the moon’s 
speed will gradually slacken until the orbit of the earth 
reaches the limit of its elliptical form. This is another 
of the great timepieces of the Creator; millions of years 
are consumed in this one revolution of the hands of God’s 
clock, and are we not justified in calling this period of 
time one of God’s days? 

This great clock of God was wound up untold millions 


® The Planetary and Stellar Worlds, O. M. Mitchell, pp. 112-115. 


44 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


of years ago when the great collision occurred which pro- 
duced the nebula from which our solar system has 
evolved; the clock is slowly, but surely, running down, 
and at some time in eternity it will stop. 

As the mass of the moon is only about one-eightieth 
of that of its mother earth, it cooled much faster; conse- 
quently, we find no atmosphere and no vapor of water 
surrounding it: these have been condensed into solids by 
the intense cold. This condition is a prophecy of the 
conditions which will eventually prevail on this earth. 
There is every evidence to convince us that in its youth 
and early maturity the moon was torn by violent explo- 
sions and terrific volcanic activities. Immense craters are 
observable all over its surface in apparently the same 
condition as they were when left by volcanic action. As 
the result of this volcanic action and the warping and 
folding of its crust as the cooling and contracting process 
progressed, immense mountains were formed. The moon’s 
surface shows over seven hundred mountains whose 
height exceeds 6,500 feet, and some are as high as 24,000 
feet. The color of the moon should be described as yel- 
low, grey and dark green, the reflection from volcanic 
products.1° 

Of course, what is on the other side of the moon, the 
side that is never turned toward the earth and which man 
can never see, we can only conjecture; perhaps it does 
not greatly differ from the side that is turned forever 
toward us. 

The moon cooled so rapidly that the gases which form- 
ed its atmosphere were undoubtedly the same as ours, and 
its waters were perhaps condensed into solids and im- 
movably fastened in its substance before they had time to 
erode and scrape and disintegrate and polish and com- 
pletely change its surface, as these elements have done to 
the surface of the earth. As we look at the surface of 
the moon we may form some conception of the appear- 


10 The Destinies of the Stars, Arrhenius, p. 244. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 4s 


ance of our earth as it was emerging from primeval 
chaos.! 

As an illustration of some of the difficulties encountered 
in attempting to read and understand and explain God’s 
book, it should be mentioned that the absence of an 
atmosphere about the moon has been explained in a very 
different way by Arrhenius, who concludes that on ac- 
count of the small bulk of the moon it did not possess 
sufficient attraction or holding force to retain the gases 
out of which an atmosphere is made, and that these gases, 
therefore, escaped into space and were probably attracted 
back to the sun, or possibly to our earth.” 

The terrifice volcanic action, which must have continued 
on the moon for a time measured by a geologic period 
at least equal to that which our igneous rocks denote, un- 
doubtedly emitted immense volumes of gases, of the 
presence of which on the moon there is now no evidence. 
The same theories would explain the absence of atmos- 
phere about the asteroids. 

Our solar system, the sun with the planets and their 
satellites, is moving through space in a straight line to- 
ward the constellation Lyra 1% at about the rate of 1,000,- 
000 miles a day, and has been so moving for time beyond 
computation.14 Man “by searching” has learned to com- 
pute the amount of energy which this great velocity and 
immense weight of matter represents. One-half the mass 
multiplied by the square of the velocity represents the 
amount of energy, and this energy is never diminished or 
lost, for motion of matter and consequent energy are 
eternal. 


11 For pictures of lunar craters see The Earth’s Beginning, Sir 
Robert Ball, p. 255. For pictures of lunar craters see The Origin 
and Evolution of Life, Henry F. Osborne, p. 30. 

12 For photographs of moon see The Destinies of the Stars, 
Arrhenius, p. 242. 
oe A for Everybody, Simon Newcomb, pp. 325-326; 

14 The Earth's Beginning, Sir Robert S. Ball, p. 352, says: 
“One-half of a million miles a day.” 


46 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


The planets Mercury and Venus revolve about the sun 
inside the orbit of the earth, and not very much is known 
about them. The exact length of their day is uncertain; 
it seems probable that they rotate on their axes in the 
same time that they revolve about the sun. If this be 
true, it indicates that they have not greatly cooled nor 
contracted since they were thrown off from the central 
sun. 

As their orbits are inside that of the earth they always 
appear either as morning or evening stars; in other words, 
they are always a little ahead of or a little behind the sun, 
as viewed by us. Because they shine by reflected light, 
and because they are constantly changing their positions 
with relation to the earth, they exhibit all the changing 
phases which we see in the moon. These changing phases 
can only be seen by the aid of a telescope, though they 
were foreseen and predicted by Copernicus. 

It was permitted to Galileo in 1610 to be the first of 
Adam’s race to see through his little telescope these 
changing phases: “There are occasions in life when great 
minds live years of rapt enjoyment in a moment. I can 
fancy the emotions of Galileo, when, first raising the 
newly constructed telescope to the heavens, he saw ful- 
filled the grand prophecy of Copernicus, and beheld the 
planet Venus crescent like the moon. >*) *)) “ayes: 
noble Galileo, thou art right. It does move. Bigots may 
make thee recant it: but it moves nevertheless. * * * 
The inquisition may seal thy lips, but they can no more 
stop the progress of the great truth propounded by Coper- 
nicus and demonstrated by thee than they can stop the 
revolving earth. Close now, venerable sage, that sight- 
less, tearful eye. It has seen what man never before 
saw: it has seen enough. Hang up that poor little spy- 
glass: it has done its work. Franciscans and Dominicans 
deride thy discoveries now, but rest in peace, thou great 
Columbus of the heavens, scorned, persecuted, broken- 
hearted. In other ages, in distant hemispheres, when the 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 47 


votaries of science, with solemn acts of consecration shall 
dedicate their stately edifices to the cause of knowledge 
and truth, thy name shall be mentioned with honor.” ® 

Recent studies and observations have added to our 
knowledge of this celestial neighbor. The humidity of 
Venus is six times the average humidity of the earth and 
three times that of the Congo region in Africa. Every- 
thing there is soaking wet. The excess of moisture and 
the large amount of carbon dioxide keep the temperature 
about even from pole to pole, forming a blanket over the 
entire planet, so that we do not see its surface, but only 
the clouds that envelop it. The vegetation is undoubtedly 
tropical,?® much like that of ours in the carboniferous age. 
Venus is young, and may in the course of zxons evolve 
to a condition similar to our earth’s in historic times. 

While Venus is our nearest neighbor toward the sun, 
Mars is our nearest neighbor on the other side, being at 
times less than 36,000,000 miles away. Its diameter is 
only a little more than half that of the earth, and it 
rotates on its axis in 24 hours, 37 minutes, 22 seconds. 
Many are the theories that have been advanced concern- 
ing this neighbor of ours, many of which must still be 
considered only as theories, for scientific men are not 
agreed concerning them. But its nearness makes observa- 
tions with the telescope much more satisfactory than those 
made upon any other planet. 

Mars apparently has a snow and ice cap at each pole, 
exactly as we have on our earth, and these ice caps par- 
tially melt each summer as the pole is turned toward the 
sun; this fact is proved by the reduced surface covered 
by the ice cap as the summer advances. Atmospheric 
disturbances which are supposed to be snowstorms, are 
frequently seen, and dust storms on the deserts. 

Mars has two small moons which revolve about it with 


15 Address by Edward Everett, delivered at Albany, N. Y., 
August 28, 1856. 


16 The Destinies of the Stars, Arrhenius, p. 250. 


48 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


tremendous speed.t7 One of them, which is only 5,800 
miles away, moves from west to east so rapidly that it 
rises in the west and sets in the east. It makes its com- 
plete revolution about the planet in 7 hours, 39 minutes. 

It has been claimed for many years by eminent 
astronomers, that there are evidences that Mars is in- 
habited by intelligent beings, perhaps not very different 
from ourselves. In proof of this, our attention is directed 
to certain lines on the surface of Mars believed to be 
canals, probably for irrigation purposes, which seem to be 
laid out with great. regularity and engineering skill, and 
which are supposed to be for the purpose of conveying 
water from the melting snow and ice about the poles to 
the arid regions toward the equator. Giovanni Virginio 
Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer, and Professor Per- 
cival Lowell, an American astronomer, are the two most 
ardent champions of this theory. Certain appearances 
along the borders of these canals, especially during their 
summer months, are supposed to indicate growing vegeta- 
tion; and if these lines are canals, they must certainly be 
of artificial construction. These matters are not yet 
agreed upon by scientists, and for the present we must 
suspend judgment. 

Mars is so much smaller than the earth, and probably 
was separated from the sun so long before the earth, that 
it is much colder than our planet and possesses a more 
rarefied atmosphere, so that it could hardly be a suitable 
place for animal life such as we know and are able to 
study. It may be that Mars is reaching a point in its 
evolution which we shall reach in a far distant future, 
where animal and vegetable life are maintained with in- 
creasing difficulty and where they may relatively soon be- 
come extinct. 

Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter it was long ago 
recognized that a planet should be found, as Bode’s law 
required that such a body must exist; but it was not until 


17 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, p. 222. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 49 


the dawning of the nineteenth century that the apparent 
absence of this planet was explained. Instead of one 
large planet, moving in an orbit closely approximating 
that required by Bode’s law, there were discovered about 
700 small planets, with diameters varying from about Io 
to nearly 500 miles, and moving in very eccentric orbits. 
Some of them at times approach nearer to the sun than 
the planet Mars, and some of them at times go so far 
from the sun as to approximate closely the orbit of 
Jupiter. There are periods when one of these asteroids, 
Eros, approaches to within 13,500,000 miles of the orbit 
of the earth,!® and its period of rotation on its axis has 
been calculated as 51% hours. About this latter statement 
there is perhaps some doubt. 

It is probable that not all of these little planets, or 
asteroids as they are called, have as yet been seen. The 
smallest discovered have a diameter of only about Io 
miles, and there is every reason to suppose that there may 
be others much smaller in size, which, perhaps, cannot be 
detected by any means at present at the disposal of 
science. The orbits of many of them have not been 
thoroughly traced out, as they are extremely erratic and 
their small size makes them difficult of observation. That 
all of them rotate on their axes there can be no doubt, 
but the times of rotation, except in the case of Eros, may 
never be determined, and the angles which their bi-polar 
axes make to the plane of the ecliptic may never be 
measured. 

How did it happen that, instead of one large planet 
moving in its proper orbit between Mars and Jupiter, 
where Bode’s law would place it, these seven hundred, and 
probably more, minute wanderers were developed? 
Science has two answers, neither of which may be cor- 
rect, although one seems quite probable. As God has 
plenty of material and unlimited time, a miscarriage in 
the birth of a planet is of no importance to Him. Other 


18 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, p. 229, 


50 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


planets with other suns to warm and light them will be 
born whenever and wherever He decrees. ‘His everlast- 
ing thought moves on His undisturbed affairs.” 

One theory accounting for the development of these 
asteroids is that a large planet, moving in the orbit indi- 
cated by Bode’s law, exploded from some cause which 
we cannot explain, and that these asteroids are the frag- 
ments. Also that the erratic character of their orbits is 
largely due to the force imparted to them by this explo- 
sion. The laws of momentum will eventually function to 
bring all their orbits to conform with the plane of 
the ecliptic. 

Another and more probable theory is that the great 
mass of the planet Jupiter, which is 88,000 miles in 
diameter and which is next outside the orbits of these 
asteroids, was able, by its power of attraction, to tear in 
pieces the forming planet before it had reached the 
spherical stage, while it was still a gaseous or fluid mass, 
perhaps still a gaseous ring around the central sun. This 
latter theory stands the tests of scientific inquiry fairly 
well, and must answer for the present, ’til some Newton, 
Bode or Kepler, in the ages to come, determines the solu- 
tion of this problem beyond discussion. 

Jupiter is the great planet of our solar system. If 
there is some reason to believe that Mars may be in- 
habited by intelligent beings not greatly different from 
ourselves, there is no possibility, so far as we can judge, 
that any form of vegetable or animal life can exist on 
the planet Jupiter, owing to its exceedingly high tem- 
perature and to the fact that it has not as yet cooled down 
to the point where it is a solid body. Apparently it is 
a semi-solid or partly gaseous body, and what we see of 
it is mostly the clouds of vapor which surround it, partly 
composing its atmosphere. 

It has long been supposed by some observers, that 
Jupiter was self-luminous, but this is doubtful: it shines 
by reflected light, and its self-luminosity, if existent, is 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 51 


certainly very feeble. It is not only the largest of the 
planets, but larger than all the others and their satellites 
combined. Its diameter is 88,000 miles; its surface 122 
times that of the earth, its mass 316 times that of the 
earth, and its volume 1,355 times that of the earth.!9 Its 
mass, though it is so great, is only about 1/1048 that of 
the sun. Its mean distance from the sun is 483,000,000 
miles, and it revolves about the sun in 11.9 years. This 
immense body rotates upon its axis in 9 hours, 55 minutes, 
which is the most rapid motion found in the rotation of 
any of the planets, and amounts to only a little less than 
9,000 miles an hour at its equator. This apparently in- 
dicates that Jupiter has greatly contracted in size since 
it separated from our central sun, and we may be sure 
that as it further contracts and cools it will increase the 
rate of its motion on its axis. Jupiter, when in opposi- 
tion, is about 390,000,000 miles from the earth, and when 
in conjunction about 580,000,000 miles from the earth. 

Jupiter has eight moons, possibly more, which vary 
greatly in size, in their periods of revolution and in their 
distances from their mother planet. To Galileo belongs 
the honor of seeing, through his little telescope, what the 
eye of man had never seen before. In January, 1610, he 
discovered four of the moons of Jupiter and noted their 
revolutions about their planet; no other satellite was dis- 
covered ’til 1892, which indicates how close an observer 
was this great “Columbus of the Heavens.” The sixth 
and seventh satellites were discovered in 1905, and the 
eighth in 1908. 

The four satellites discovered by Galileo vary in 
diameter from 2,000 miles to 3,600 miles, and their dis- 
tances from Jupiter vary from 169,000 to 262,000 miles. 
The outer one of these four requires 70 days for its 
revolution. The fifth moon is very difficult of detection 
and has been seen by comparatively few people, both on 
account of its small size and its peculiar appearance and 


19 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, pp. 232, 233, 234. 


52 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


its closeness to the mother planet. It is less than I00 
miles in diameter and is distant from Jupiter 112,500 
miles. It makes a complete revolution about the planet 
in II hours, 57 minutes, 22 seconds, which time is only 
reduced by the inner satellite of Mars, which revolves 
about its planet in 7 hours, 39 minutes. The sixth and 
seventh satellites are even smaller than the fifth, but in- 
stead of revolving in a few hours, require several months 
to make the circuit of their orbits. The eighth moon of 
Jupiter, which was not discovered until 1908, is distant 
from Jupiter 16,000,000 miles. These eight moons, which 
have such various times of revolution, may be frequently 
seen passing across the face of the planet and casting their 
shadows upon it; they also pass behind it into eclipse. 
Their various times of revolution are appointed for them 
by the laws of moment of momentum. 

There are certain resemblances between Jupiter and 
the sun. Jupiter, while not so hot as the sun, is still more 
than boiling hot, and is in a fluid or gaseous state, 
possibly to some extent self-luminous. With its satellites 
it constitutes more than half the bulk of the planetary 
system, and the number of its satellites is the same as the 
number of the planets. If Jupiter had taken five hundred 
times more of the bulk of the sun when it separated from 
that luminary, we should have had two suns in our system 
of planets instead of one, a condition which. apparently 
exists in numerous systems in the heavens. 

The planet Saturn was for many centuries supposed to 
mark the outer limit of our solar system; but little more 
than this was known about it until 1610, when Galileo 
with his “little spy glass” discovered what looked to him 
like handles on either side of the planet. These “handles” 
he was unable to identify, and he feared that he had been 
in some way deceived, or that his mental condition was 
responsible for an error in observation. In fact, he had 
again seen what man never saw before: he had seen the 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 53 


rings of Saturn, but he died before the exact nature of 
the “handles” was accurately determined. 

It was 240 years after Galileo first saw them before 
the third ring was definitely differentiated from its fellows 
and astronomers were prepared to concede that there were 
three concentric rings about this planet. Much has been 
learned about them since that time, but, as they are 
unique in all the universe so far as we know, there re- 
mains much to be found out by searching. The existence 
of a third inner ring has been questioned, and it is 
claimed on high authority that what has been considered. 
the third or inner ring is, in fact, a part of the second 
ring. The outer ring ?° is about 1,200 miles wide; is 
separated from the next inner ring by approximately 
2,000 miles. The second ring is about 17,000 miles wide, 
and the inner ring 10,000 miles wide. Between the inner 
ring and the equator of the planet there is a distance of 
approximately 8,000 miles. 

These rings all revolve in the same direction as the 
planet, from west to east, and in the plane of the equator. 
Their thickness is less than 100 miles. It seems as if 
these rings of Saturn might bear the same relation to 
Saturn’s moons that the asteroids bear to the planets. 
They contain the makings of a satellite perhaps (we are 
not entitled to say probably); eventually they may be 
assembled and condensed into two or three moons, after 
the planet has greatly cooled and contracted. It seems 
possible that we have in these rings an exhibition, before 
our very eyes, of the way planets and moons are made, or 
at least, as in the case of the asteroids, we are able to 
observe how some of the forces of nature appear to de- 
feat the primary objects of the Creator. 

The planet Saturn is the least dense of all the planets, 
being less than water.?*_ It is exceedingly large, with an 


20 Astronomy for Everybody, Simon Newcomb, p. 213 and 
following. Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, p. 242. 


21 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, pp. 239-240. 


54 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


equatorial diameter of 75,000 miles, and it rotates on its 
axis very rapidly, completing rotation in 10 hours, 14 
minutes. The mass and density of the rings are small, 
and it would seem natural that a planet which is more 
than boiling hot and whose density is so small and which 
is rotating so rapidly, would throw off from its surface 
the vapors and gases which must of necessity rise to its 
surface. These vapors and gases, when they had cooled 
a little, would have made a cloud such as the steam cloud 
which we often see following a rapidly moving locomo- 
tive. This cloud would follow along in the direction given 
it by the planet which threw it off, and by the laws of 
gravity would continue to rotate about that planet. Per- 
haps this explains the formation and existence of these 
rings. What their future will be and their ultimate des- 
tiny, no man can tell. 

Saturn appears to us as one of the largest stars, and 
shines with a bright yellow light. Its average distance 
from the sun is 886,000,000 miles, and its distance from 
the earth varies from 774,000,000 to I,028,000,000 miles. 
Its orbital plane is inclined to the plane of the ecliptic only 
244°. It revolves about the sun in 29.5 years.2? As might 
be expected in a planet of so little density, such intense 
heat and so rapid a rotation on its axis, Saturn has more 
satellites than any other planet, ten in all, so far as have 
yet been discovered. It seems probable that there are 
others not yet discovered because of their small size and 
great distance from us; at least there is little reason to 
assume that astronomers have found them all. From the 
time of the discovery of the first until the tenth was 
recognized was a period of 243 years. These moons vary 
greatly in size, the tenth having a diameter of approxi- 
mately less than 200 miles, and Titan, the largest, having 
a diameter of approximately 4,000 miles, and their dis- 
tances from the mother planet vary from about 100,000 to 
8,000,000 miles, and the periods of their revolution about 


22 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, pp. 239-240. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 55 


their planet vary from twenty-three hours to eighteen 
months. The rings are inside the orbit of the nearest 
satellite, and evidently are a later development in the 
process of evolution in and about the planet. Is it not 
possible, indeed is it not very probable that other rings and 
other satellites may yet be thrown off by this rapidly 
rotating, boiling, steaming planet? 

The planet Uranus and its four satellites have been 
looked upon with special interest by astronomers for many 
years, especially as the revolution of the satellites about 
their planet seemed to upset and contradict the nebular 
hypothesis of Laplace. These apparent contradictions 
seem to have been satisfactorily explained, however, and 
the nebular hypothesis upheld. 

Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel in 
1782; though Herschel and other observers had seen it 
before, they had, up to that time, failed to realize that it 
was a planet and not one of the smaller fixed stars. Its 
period of revolution about the sun is 84 years, and its 
distance from the sun is from 1,700,000,000 to 1,800,- 
000,000 miles. It has a diameter of about 32,000 miles, 
perhaps a little less. On account of its great distance, 
and the absence of any striking markings on its surface, 
it has been impossible so far to determine the time of its 
rotation on its axis. Its bulk is about 66 times that of 
our earth. Not long after his discovery of the planet in 
1782, Sir William Herschel discovered two satellites, after 
which it was supposed for a time that there were six in 
all. But in 1851 it was definitely decided that there were 
only four, the second pair being discovered in that year 
by Lassell. None of these moons is very large, and two 
of them can only be seen by the largest telescope and un- 
der the most favorable conditions. 

The satellites of Uranus all revolve about the planet in 
the “wrong direction” and in the same plane, which is 
probably the plane of the planet’s equator, and at a very 
rapid rate. The times of their revolutions vary from 1 


56 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


day, 12 hours, to 13 days, 11 hours, and their distances 
from the planet from 120,000 to 375,000 miles. The 
times of their rotation on their axes cannot be determined. 

In the rings of Saturn is found something unique in 
the planetary system, perhaps simply a different and 
earlier stage in planetary evolution from anything ob- 
served elsewhere, and science has thus far not been able 
to explain satisfactorily these phenomena. So also in the 
motions of the satellites of Uranus and Neptune are found 
phenomena which it has taxed the ingenuity and learning 
of scientists to explain. All the other bodies in our solar 
system rotate on their axes from west to east and in 
approximately the same plane, which is called the plane 
of the ecliptic, and is the plane of the earth’s orbit. 

All the planets revolve about the sun in the same di- 
rection and in approximately the same plane, and all the 
satellites except those of Uranus and Neptune revolve 
in the same direction, from west to east, and in planes 
closely approximated to the plane of the ecliptic. Some 
of the asteroids depart quite widely from this plane, 
probably due to the exceptional forces which produced 
them. 

The four satellites of Uranus revolve about their planet 
in a plane which is inclined to the plane of the ecliptic 
83°, or nearly at a right angle, and it seems probable that 
the plane of the equator of the planet is inclined to the 
ecliptic by the same angle. The planet probably rotates 
from east to west, though this has not been proved by 
observation, as there are no objects or markings on the 
surface by which its rotation can be accurately deter- 
mined. The question which has puzzled scientists is: 
why do these satellites of Uranus and Neptune revolve 
about their planets from east to west, or perhaps more 
accurately, from north to south? The answer seems easy. 
These planets mark the outer limits of our solar system, 
and were separated from the primeval nebula early in 
its evolution, while it was probably still in a gaseous state. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 57 


The countless motions which were imparted to the atoms 
of this nebula by the tremendous force of the collision 
which gave it birth had not yet been unified by the laws 
of moment of momentum, and had not been brought to 
operate in planes closely approximated to each other. The 
great nebula was rotating very slowly; it was still in the 
spiral form; it had not yet assumed a definite axis about 
which to rotate; it was an accumulation of contradictory 
motions which were ultimately to be brought into one 
plane and to operate in one direction. While the nebula 
was in this chaotic state, the immense volumes of vapors 
or gases from which Uranus and Neptune were formed 
became separated from the central mass with all sorts of 
contradictory motions within them. The central nebula 
had not yet developed sufficient character in its motions 
to be able to impart that character to its offspring, so 
like naughty children, they turned over in the wrong di- 
rection, and their satellites, as they could not do otherwise, 
have followed in the same direction. These planets re- 
volve about the sun in the same direction and in approx- 
imately the same planes as all the other planets. They 
cannot escape from the laws of gravitation or moment of 
momentum, and it seems inevitable that all their satellites 
must finally be brought into the same plane as all the 
other planetary bodies, and rotate and revolve in the same 
direction. These anomalous motions simply represent an 
early stage in planetary evolution, and, like the rings of 
Saturn, enable us to see the various steps and methods by 
which God makes His worlds. 

The planet Neptune, like its neighbor, Uranus, has 
peculiarities of motion found nowhere else except in these 
two planets. Its satellite, like that of Uranus, revolves 
from east to west, though the plane of its revolution ap- 
proaches more nearly to the plane of the ecliptic. It is 
inclined to this plane 34° 48’,2° which is undoubtedly the 
inclination of the plane of the equator of the planet. 


23 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, p. 250. 


58 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


Perhaps the most interesting thing about this planet is 
the history of its discovery, which was a triumph of pure 
mathematical skill such as the world had never before 
seen. It had been observed that the planet Uranus did 
not keep to its orbit, and did not arrive at given points on 
the times appointed for it by astronomers. It had been 
suspected that there might be a planet outside its orbit, 
but no astronomer could find it. A young French mathe- 
matician named Leverrier figured out, from variations in 
the orbit of Uranus, just where this suspected planet 
should be, but as he had no sufficiently powerful telescope, 
he wrote to astronomers in Berlin directing them where to 
look for it in the heavens, and assuring them that at this 
point they would find it. The planet was found by Galle 
at the point indicated by Leverrier within half an hour 
after the search was commenced on the evening of Sep- 
tember 23, 1846. No greater triumph of the human mind 
than this has ever been recorded. This was a case where 
some of the ways of God were found out by searching, 
which could have been found in no other way, for this 
planet was outside the range of the unaided human eye, 
and its existence could never have been suspected except 
as the result of the application of the principles of pure 
science. 

Another interesting feature about Neptune is that its 
place in the heavens is not where we should expect to find 
it under Bode’s law. It is 800,000,000 miles nearer the 
sun than this law indicates it should be.2* An English 
astronomer, Adams, is entitled to equal credit with Lever- 
rier for the discovery of this planet, for, at the same time 
and by the same methods, he had made the same dis- 
covery, but the matter was not announced publicly to 
the scientific world and it was known only to some of his 
immediate associates. The planet Neptune is about 33,000 
miles in diameter ; its volume is 60 times that of the earth; 


24 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, pp. 249-250. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 59 


it revolves about the sun once in 164 years, and its dis- 
tance from the sun is 2,800,000,000 miles. 

About four weeks after the discovery of Neptune, a 
moon was discovered by Lassell. It is distant from the 
mother planet 222,000 miles, and revolves about it in 5 
days, 21 hours. It is probably about the size of our own 
moon. 

The sun would not appear to an inhabitant of Neptune, 
if there were such an inhabitant, as the dazzling orb which 
we see, but much fainter and smaller.2° It has been esti- 
mated that the amount of light which the planet receives 
from the sun is about equivalent to that which the earth 
would receive from 700 full moons, so we may judge that 
the planet is not shrouded in darkness. 

Are there other planets outside the orbit of Neptune? 
Probably not. Neptune and the other planets do not show 
those perturbations in their orbits which would indicate 
the presence of another planet, and the fact that Neptune 
is 800,000,000 miles nearer the sun than we should expect, 
according to Bode’s law, would seem to indicate that there 
is no outside, attracting, steadying force to hold the planet 
away from the sun. The attracting bodies are all inside 
its orbit. 

These planets and their satellites, and all the things that 
men have been able to find out about them by study and 
searching, take up many pages in the book which God is 
writing, but we are able to understand that they make but 
a small part of that great book. Nevertheless, they 
furnish the key by which many of the other pages may 
be translated. 

It has been found that light travels about 12,000,000 
miles a minute, or 196,000 miles a second. It takes light 
about 8 minutes to come to us from the sun, about 40 
minutes from Jupiter, and about 4 hours from Neptune. 
So when we look at Neptune we see it not where it is, 
but where it was four hours before. 


25 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, pp. 249-250. 


60 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


It seems probable that the inter-stellar spaces contain 
innumerable dark bodies moving in all directions, most of 
them not of great size. With these our earth is con- 
stantly coming in contact. The origin of most of these 
bodies is beyond conjecture; they come from the depths 
of space and, if they do not collide with other bodies, 
continue their flight through all eternity. 

It was contended by Sir Norman Lockyer that all the 
heavenly bodies, or at least our entire solar system, were 
either meteors or their accumulation or condensation.?® 
Some of these dark bodies are undoubtedly very large and 
are moving at a tremendous rate. If one of them should 
collide with our earth or sun it would settle for all time 
the problems which perplex the sons of men. That these 
catastrophes occur not infrequently among the distant 
stars is abundantly evidenced in the heavens, and there is 
no reason why our solar system may not meet this experi- 
ence at any indefinite date. 

Millions of shooting stars or meteors strike our atmos- 
phere every day, and may be seen almost any evening by 
those who care to look for them. Most of them burn out 
long before they reach the surface of the earth, as they 
are ignited by contact with the atmosphere at a great 
height ; but some are so large as to fail of complete com- 
bustion and reach the earth as masses of rock or iron. 
Some of these masses of meteoric iron weigh many tons. 
These are the bodies which the ancients said “fell down 
from Jupiter,” who was the great god and father of all 
gods and men. Burned out meteors have been known to 
descend to the earth as small masses of light ashes, ready 
to be blown away by the slightest gust of wind. 

There has been much speculation as to the physical 
character of comets, but it seems to be fairly well estab- 
lished that they consist largely of small particles of solid 
matter illuminated by the sun, of which some of our 
meteors and shooting stars are stray samples. 

Professor Newcomb has called comets “gravel banks” 


26 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, pp. 293, 353-358. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 61 


and others have styled them “dust clouds,” both of which 
terms seem correct and appropriate. It is claimed on good 
authority that the meteoric showers which were witnessed 
In 1855-1872-1892-1898 were due to the fact that the 
earth was passing through the tail of. Bielas’ comet. A 
piece of meteoric iron which fell in northern Mexico in 
1885 has been confidently claimed by competent scientists 
to be a piece of Bielas’ comet.?? 

Some of the comets are absent from our solar system 
for long periods and can have little to do with our fre- 
quent meteoric showers.?8 Mitchell computes that the 
comet of 1811 has a period of 3,000 years, and that its 
distance from the sun varies from 80,000,000,000 to 160,- 
000,000,000 miles. 

It has been observed that many meteors have a regular 
orbit about the sun, in fact behave like little planets, and 
that the earth passes through this orbit during the latter 
half of November in each year, at which time meteors 
and shooting stars are most frequently seen. 

A consideration of our sun and the planets, with their 
satellites, which revolve around it, will certainly inspire 
reverence and awe in any intelligent mind. As the laws 
which govern these moving bodies are more perfectly 
understood, and their origin and destiny are revealed to 
the searching mind, that reverence and awe will be in- 
creased in proportion as the mind and soul of the observer 
are able to grasp the infinitude of the Creator, and appre- 
ciate the wonderful works of His hand. 

If men in crude and barbarous ages, who had little 
knowledge of these heavenly bodies and no conception of 
what they were, were filled with awe at their contempla- 
tion, should not we, who have inherited so much from the 
toil and study and persecution of the men of science, be 
filled with reverence, not only when we contemplate the 
heavens, but when we turn our thoughts from His works 
to the great Architect and Builder of this universe. 


27 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, p. 290. 
28 The Planetary and Stellar Worlds, O. M. Mitchell, p. 189. 


CHAPTER IV 


Men, the holiest and best of men, have unconsciously 
made their God a little God, “the God of the whole earth,” 
as 1f that were any adequate measure of greatness. This 
was unavoidable while men knew nothing of God’s uni- 
verse and could only study Him in those manifestations 
of Nature which were close about them. Poets and seers, 
in an ignorant age and in the crudest civilizations, have 
occasionally been able to rise above the barbarities about 
them, and like Socrates and Plato, dream of a great re- 
public where all things would be well. But these wise 
and good men had little conception of spiritual values, 
and no conception of a deity who had any interests or 
powers beyond this earth. Even writers of ancient He- 
brew literature had little idea of a God greater than a God 
of the whole earth, though His glory was in the heavens; 
but of those heavens they knew nothing. 

Modern scientists have opened up many pages of God’s 
book written in the stars, so far away that no human mind 
can comprehend the distance. In many cases the scientists 
have been able to read these pages and really comprehend 
what is written. Hundreds of these devout men, in all 
departments of science and all over the earth, are slowly 
spelling out the marvelous things which God has put down 
in His book. To us these things are great, but to Him 
there is nothing either great or small. 

Our sun, with its attendant planets, is moving through 
space at approximately one million miles a day, and has 
maintained this velocity for untold zons, yet it does not 
perceptibly change its position in the heavens because the 
distances are so vast that millions of miles are of relatively 
little importance. 

Science has taught us there is no limit to the universe; 

62 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 63 


there is no beginning and no end to space; there is no 
limit to the number of the stars. Where the most perfect 
telescopes can detect nothing, the photographic plate shows 
millions of stars whose obscurity is due to distance, not 
to insignificant size or lack of brilliancy. 

About 100,000,000 stars are visible through the best 
telescopes, but there is evidence that these are only the 
preface to what lies beyond. Light travels at the rate of 
about 12,000,000 miles a minute, and the distance which 
it travels in a year is called a “light year.” This light year 
is taken as the unit of measurement among the stars. We 
can have no conception of what this distance is: its vast- 
ness is past finding out by us, but it is simply a step as 
God measures distance. The light year is about 63,000 
times the distance of the earth from the sun.? 

It seems probable that the star nearest to us is Alpha 
Centauri. It is 275,000 times as far from us as our sun, 
and it takes light from it about four years to reach us. 
There are not many stars within seven times as near us 
as this—probably not more than 500. Very few of the 
stars are nearer than 7,000 times the distance of Alpha 
Centauri, and light from the nearest of them has taken 
10,000 years to reach us.” 

The stars, other than the planets, are called fixed stars, 
not because they do not move, but because they do not 
seem to us to move, on account of their great distance 
from us. In point of fact, many of these stars are moving 
through space in straight lines, and perhaps no two of 
them in the same direction, with a velocity of at least 140 
miles a second. We cannot comprehend such rapid 
motion any more than we can comprehend the distances 
of these stars from us, and their size is equally incompre- 
hensible to the human mind. 

Sir William Herschel concluded that he found some 
stars so distant that their light would require one thousand 


1 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, pp. 295, 306. 
2 Astronomy for Everybody, Simon Newcomb, pp. 323-324. 


64 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


years to reach us,® and others 120,000 years, and still 
others so distant that their light would require 350,000 
years to reach the earth traveling at the rate of 12,000,000 
miles a minute. 

A photograph may be made of a spectrum from the 
light of a star so distant that it has taken centuries for 
that light to reach us; but after so long a flight this light 
still retains all its original qualities, so that the chemical 
composition of the bodies from which it emanated may 
be accurately determined by the spectrum which it 
furnishes. 

The light which we get from the stars is sufficient to 
be of some service, though its entire combined power is 
not great. It has been estimated that on a clear night the 
light received from the stars is about 1/33,000,000 of that 
which we receive from the sun. Much of this light comes 
from the millions of stars that are invisible to the unaided 
eye. 

The heavens contain many non-luminous stars, perhaps 
as many as there are of those that shine, and some of 
these are of great magnitude. Because of their non- 
luminosity they are ordinarily invisible, but occasionally 
they pass across the face of a luminous star, which they 
temporarily eclipse, confirming their presence. Certain 
peculiarities in the movements of some stars indicate the 
presence of an immense body which is invisible. 

The time will come when our sun will no longer give 
forth light or heat, but will be moving through space as 
a dark, frozen body; no longer visible, as a star of the 
sixth magnitude, to the inhabitants of the planets, re- 
volving about the suns which we now behold as little stars. 
This condition is certainly far in the future, but God has 
written in His book that it will surely come to pass. 

Temporary stars of great brilliancy have from time to 


ihe The Planetary and Stellar Worlds, O. M. Mitchell, pp. 216- 


4 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, p. 309. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 6s 


time appeared in the heavens, the exact nature and causes 
of which have not been clearly explained. Some of them 
have disappeared entirely, and others have gradually 
faded until they may be detected only by the best tele- 
scopes. Again, stars that were apparently as permanent 
as any have disappeared, leaving no trace. Have they 
moved so far away as to be no longer within reach of 
our instruments, or have they cooled off ’til they are no 
longer luminous? No one can tell. 

Perhaps there is nothing in the heavens of more interest 
than the variable stars of which there are several varieties 
and great numbers, perhaps millions: new ones are con- 
stantly being found.® These variable stars are subject 
to a great variety of changes; some of them simply change 
from stars of perhaps the first or second magnitude to 
the sixth or seventh magnitude during a period of years, 
and subsequently increase in brightness to their former 
brilliancy. Some of these stars have assumed the char- 
acteristics of nebulz, after a few months, perhaps indi- 
cating that a great collision has taken place and that the 
entire mass has been converted into gas and mist as the 
result of the great heat developed by the force of the 
collision of the two great bodies. 

One of these nebule is at a distance from us of more 
than 100 light years, which, expressed in miles, would be 
598,500,000,000,000. It is even probable that this star or 
nebula is three times this distance away. It was first seen 
as a bright star on February 21, 1901, which would in- 
dicate that at a time, which we cannot with perfect ac- 
curacy determine, probably somewhere between February 
21, 1601, and February 21, 1801, two dark suns of great 
magnitude and density and moving with terrific velocity 
collided, producing by that collision so much heat that the 
entire mass of both bodies was converted into fire, mist 
and gas. What better proof could we find than this of 
the first step in the nebular hypothesis? A large number 


5 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, pp. 311-320. 


66 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


of variable stars have a period of about a year, remaining 
faint most of the time, rapidly increasing in brightness up 
to the second or third magnitude, and then after a few 
days quickly fading to their usual dimness. 

Other variable stars are constantly changing in bril- 
liancy during periods of three or four hours, and, after 
remaining at the same degree of brightness for a few 
minutes, change back to the other extreme of luminosity. 
Some of these variable stars change with such absolute 
regularity that their times can be computed to the second, 
and only a few days are required to complete the cycle. 

Probably the same explanation would not apply to all 
the variable stars, and of none of these explanations are 
scientists entirely sure; still, reasonable theories, which are 
probably true, are not hard to find. These bodies are 
surely rotating on their axes, and no two of them rotate 
in exactly the same time; they may have dark spots and 
bright spots on their surfaces, and as they rotate these 
spots are alternately shown to us, which would certainly 
account for the behavior of many of them. 

We know that the heavens are full of double, triple and 
quadruple stars which revolve about each other, or, some- 
times, about a common centre; and these members of the 
compound stars often differ greatly in luminosity. So it 
is very easy to understand how the most brilliant of a 
group might be periodically eclipsed by one of the darkest 
members. Again, these distant suns may, and probably 
often do, have immense planets revolving about them in 
immense and eccentric orbits, and these planets may singly 
or in conjunction eclipse their sun in what appears to us 
at very irregular periods. It certainly would be strange 
if our sun were the only one among the millions which 
had the honor to be attended by a habitable planet. 

Different opinions have prevailed as to the proper mo- 
tions of the suns, and it used to be said that all the stars 
of the universe were revolving about Alcyone, one of the 
stars in the Pleiades, and that Heaven was undoubtedly 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 67 


located in this star, and there would be found the throne 
of God. God’s throne is in the heavens, but where no 
man knows. All the stars do not revolve about Alcyone, 
but seem to be moving in straight lines and in every direc- 
tion with great swiftness. Arcturus is moving about 200 
miles a second or 17,280,000 miles a day, and others 
equally fast. 

There are many systems of triple and quadruple suns: 
one in the constellation of the Harp, “the components of 
the first pair revolve about each other in 1,000 years; the 
second pair revolve about each other in 2,000 years, and 
one pair revolves about the other pair in about 1,000,000 
years.” ® In another instance, two stars revolve about 
each other in 60 years, and about a third in 500 years, 
and with an irregularity that indicates the presence of a 
fourth dark body which has never yet been seen.’ There 
are thousands of these double stars which revolve about 
each other in periods ranging from 30 years to thousands 
of years. The brilliant star Sirius has a dark star accom- 
panying it which is barely perceptible by the telescope be- 
cause of its feeble light, but which in magnitude or volume 
is 2/5 of that of Sirius. 

The Milky Way appears to the unaided eye composed 
principally of luminous mist or clouds, but is found by 
the aid of the telescope and the spectroscope to consist 
largely of stars, and the stars which seem so near together 
are near each other only in appearance, as they are usually 
separated by distances beyond computation. It is these 
great distances which make them appear so small. 


Many of the star clusters look like nebule, and even 
the telescope is sometimes unable to determine their na- 
ture, but the spectroscope tells infallibly the difference 
between a cluster of stars and a nebula, and, further, re- 
veals the character or stage in its evolution to which a 
nebula has advanced. A spiral nebula has advanced be- 


6 The Planetary and Stellar Worlds, O. M. Mitchell, p. 231. 
7 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, p. 334. 


68 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


yond the purely gaseous stage and is beginning to assume 
a definite form. It has been found that in double stars § 
the smaller member has a tint higher in the spectrum than 
the larger member, probably indicating a difference in 
age, or that one member is evolving or cooling faster than 
the other. 

The color of a star is indicative of its age. The red 
stars are those which have cooled off most, and are slowly 
approaching the stage where they will be non-luminous 
and invisible. The white stars are in their youth, and in 
zeons to come will slowly change as they cool to violet, 
blue, green and yellow, to orange and red, and ultimately 
will become non-luminous and disappear from sight. But 
who will be there or here to note these changes? Surely 
no son of Adam will be on this planet, for it will long 
since have become uninhabitable and our sun will have 
ceased to shine, moving through space as one of those 
dark bodies which no one can see. 

The various bodies moving through space, our sun, the 
planets and their satellites, the wandering meteors, the 
stars and nebulz, are all proved to be composed of the 
same chemical elements. It is possible, though not proved, 
that some stars may contain chemical elements not known 
to us and not found on this planet, but, as far as research 
can extend, all the separate bodies in the universe are 
composed of the same materials, not always combined in 
the same proportions. In the intense heat of the sun and 
stars there are no chemical combinations, each element re- 
maining separate and distinct: Arrhenius claims that the 
spectra of some red stars, far advanced in cooling, show 
chemical compounds. 

The same laws of chemical affinities and reactions, the 
same laws of light, heat, gravitation and motion, obtain 
in all parts of God’s creation, showing that the universe 
is indeed one. 

The glory and majesty of God are in the heavens. The 

8 Lessons in Astronomy, Charles A. Young, p. 326. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 69 


movements of the stars and planets mark off for Him 
the hours of His great days, and the slowly evolving 
nebule mark off for Him His eternal years; “His ever- 
lasting thought moves on His undisturbed affairs.” But 
these manifestations of His glory and majesty, wisdom 
and power are beyond and outside the observation and ex- 
perience of most of us; we can know of them only from 
the testimony of wise men who have searched out the laws 
of God and have learned something of His ways. 


CHAPTER V 


In all ages and in all countries it has been the fashion to 
stone the prophets, and the men who read God’s book and 
had the courage to announce to mankind the truths which 
it taught have quite generally done so at the peril of their 
lives. Giordana Bruno was burned at the stake because 
he dared to assert and believe that there might be other 
worlds than this which might be inhabited. To this day 
the mere mention of the names of Darwin, Tyndall and 
Huxley will cause many theologians to gnash their teeth, 
froth at the mouth and rend their garments, though few 
of them have ever read a book written by any of these 
wise and good men. Sir Isaac Newton was accused, when 
he announced his laws of attraction, of introducing 
theories which were subversive of both natural and re- 
vealed religion. 

Some good people look with pity and contempt upon 
a man who reads and believes God’s book, and pray for 
his soul, which they are sure will be damned, because he 
does not believe or accept as the word of God certain 
books written by men. While most of us cannot read 
much of God’s book that is written in the heavens or un- 
der the oceans, there is much of it that is written all 
about us, which we may easily learn to read; there are 
“sermons in stones, books in the running brooks, and good 
in everything.” 

The study of the structure of the earth is a compara- 
tively recent undertaking; but great things have been 
found out, and, as this study is pursued, we shall learn 
more and more of how God made this earth and why. 
“For my part, I look at the geological record as a history 
of the world, imperfectly kept, and written in a changing 
dialect. Of this history we possess the last volume alone, 

70 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 71 


relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume 
only here and there a short chapter has been preserved, 
and of each page only here and there a few lines. Each 
word of the slowly changing language, more or less differ- 
ent in the successive chapters, may represent the forms of 
life which are entombed in our consecutive formations, 
and which falsely appear to have been abruptly intro- 
duced.” + 

In this record we learn that there has been an orderly 
continuity of evolution from the primeval chaos to the 
present more or less perfect and beneficent processes of 
nature. We see that everything has been developed for 
the good of mankind, and that mankind is slowly pro- 
gressing toward a condition of perfection. We are justi- 
fied in assuming that God made this world for man, and 
probably no higher order of intelligences will permanently 
inhabit it. Let us see how God made it. 

Hundreds of millions of years ago the mass of which 
our earth and moon are composed was thrown off from 
our sun because of the sun’s centrifugal force due to 
rapid rotation. This mass was a boiling liquid, gas and 
vapor, as hot as our sun is at present, full of exploding 
gases and constantly emitting great tongues of flame. Its 
diameter was approximately 500,000 miles, and it rotated 
on its axis in about 28 days, or perhaps it took a longer 
time. In the course of millions (perhaps hundreds of 
millions) of years, during which time it was emitting 
immense volumes of heat, it contracted and cooled until 
it became a plastic mass. Then, partly as the result of 
the centrifugal force developed by its increasingly rapid 
rotation, and partly as the result of an internal explosion, 
the moon was separated from its mother earth, about 
which it has continued to revolve in probably the same 
time that the earth was rotating on its axis at the time of 
the moon’s birth. 


1 Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, p. 342. 


72 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


On account of the advanced stage which it had reached 
in the cooling process, and on account of its comparatively 
small size, the moon rapidly cooled and did not greatly 
contract after it separated from the earth. As it has no 
atmosphere and no water or watery vapor, no changes 
have taken place on its surface since the volcanic action 
ceased, evidenced by the immense craters and lofty moun- 
tains of volcanic origin. As its crust cooled, it was warped 
and fissured and twisted, as well as deeply marked by im- 
mense volcanoes and lava streams. But these surface 
markings have remained unchanged, so that in this age 
we may look at the moon and see just how the earth 
looked before it had been smoothed and polished and 
scraped by ice and water, and the rocks disintegrated by 
the chemical action of oxygen and carbonic acid. 


The abundant evidences of volcanic action all over the 
earth indicate that its surface conditions were once identi- 
cal with those which we see on the moon today. (See 
Frontispiece. ) 

The crust of our earth has been warped and twisted in 
every conceivable way. Mountains, miles in height, were 
pushed up from the burning core below, and streams of 
lava thousands of feet thick had been poured over vast 
areas of the earth’s surface before it cooled to the point 
where life in any form could exist. We can only guess 
at the condition and composition of the lowest rocks, as 
only about 10 or 20 miles of the earth’s crust has been 
turned up so that we can inspect it. These lowest rocks 
are termed Plutonic or massive rocks. 


Granite is one of the lowest and oldest of the rocks 
which we can inspect. It is composed of feldspar, mica, 
quartz and hornblende, which are silicates of lime, soda, 
potash or aluminum, and in which various other elements, 
as iron, are often mixed. These granites did not cool in 
the presence of air. They cooled and solidified slowly 


Man dominant 
Man Climate Zones 
Pliocene Mammals 
Miocene F 
; dominant 
Oligocene 
Eocene 


Cretaceous 


Reptiles dominant : 


Jurassic 


Birds and Mammals 
appear 


Permian 


Coal et are Appalachian Revolution 


Sub Car- 
boniferous 


Fishes dominant First Land Plants 


] 


9 
> 


9 
sale 
’ 
oe 
b . 
2190 
° 

r) 
Pol'y 
Po olee 


° 
d 
° 
oan 
Q 


Upper 
Silunan 


Lower 
Silurian 


Qvr 
~ 

No Evidences 
\ of Life 


FIGURE X 





Archaeozoic 





We le 

é cre 

7. ‘ 
4 tise 
a4 


o7 ie ; 
ayyes nie " 
(<"s ‘, 


ry, iy 


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GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 73 


under great pressure and at great depths and in great 
masses.” 

Above these Plutonic or heat rocks we have the sedi- 
mentary rocks, made in old sea bottoms by the slow 
accumulations of sediment washed down from the land 
or accumulated from the bones or shells of fish or the 
decomposed products of corals or alge. No accurate 
estimate of the age of the earth can be formed from the 
thickness of the sedimentary rocks, as these rocks have 
been subjected to denudation for untold ages, and new 
sedimentary rocks have been formed from the debris of 
the old rocks. Professor Huxley thought 100,000,000 
years sufficient to account for all geologic changes, but 
Sir Charles Lyell estimated that 500,000,000 years had 
elapsed since the beginning of geologic history. 

The sedimentary or stratified rocks are either sand 
rocks, clay rocks, or lime rocks. They are formed only 
at the bottom of water, and, as some portion of the crust 
of the earth was above water, the record will not be com- 
plete at all places. The lowest rocks are the oldest, but 
they may not be found now in their original position; 
they may have been thrown up and turned over on top 
of rocks of more recent formation. 

The age of a rock is determined by its fossils, not by 
the character of the rock or its position; but rocks de- 
posited at different depths and in different waters, as 
deep sea, lake or delta, will differ in fossils and composi- 
tion, though of the same age. (Fig. X, opp. p. 72.) The 
accompanying plates, copied and altered from LeConte 
“show a section of the earth’s crust, and illustrate geologic 
time and the progress of life.” 

Algonkian rocks alone, in the Lake Superior region, 
are 65,000 feet thick and the Archzean rocks are 50,000 
feet thick. Volcanic or eruptive rocks of great thick- 
ness and of wide extent form a considerable portion of 
the earth’s crust. The lava fields of the Northwest in 


2 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 214. 
3 and 4 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte. 


74 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Mon- 
tana and British Columbia cover 150,000 to 200,000 
square miles, and are from 3,000 to 7,000 feet thick. 

These lava flows are often forced in between the layers 
of other rocks of an entirely different geologic forma- 
tion, and, as a result, the adjacent rock is greatly changed 
in character and appearance. It may be melted by the 
great heat, and numerous chemical changes are sure to 
occur in it, and it will cool into an entirely different kind 
of rock from the original. This changed rock is called 
metamorphic rock. This metamorphosis in rock is pro- 
duced by the action of water, heat and pressure in vary- 
ing proportions; also by chemical action. True marble 
is a metamorphic limestone. In the precambrian (Fig. 
X, opp. p. 72) formations there is found limestone 94,000 
feet thick and 60,000,000 years old.® 

The earth’s crust is forming now wherever sedimenta- 
tion is taking place under water, and we are assured that 
chalk, which is pure carbonate of lime, is being deposited 
in the deep seas from the decomposing shells of Rizopods, 
Crinoids, Mollusks, Snails, Foraminifera, etc. These 
chalk formations in England and France are 1,000 feet 
thick and even thicker in other places. 

The decomposition of feldspar, which is the cementing 
substance in granite, is the source of our clays and the 
kaolin which is used in the manufacture of fine pottery. 

It should be remembered that there was originally no 
soil on the face of the earth, nothing but rock. Our soils 
have been developed by the decomposition and grinding 
up of these rocks by the various processes of nature. The 
oxygen and carbonic acid gases of the air disintegrate 
the rocks, water dissolves portions of them and washes 
them away and deposits the sediment in the valleys or at 
the bottom of seas or lakes or swamps, where it is con- 
verted into sedimentary rock. Water, when it freezes, 
opens up the rocks, often splitting them wide apart, and 


5 The Origin and Evolution of Life, Henry F. Osborne, p. 104. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 76 


exposing greater surfaces to the chemical action of the 
atmosphere. The chemical rays of the sun are also a 
powerful factor in disintegrating the rocks and converting 
them into soil. Lastly, bacteria and vegetation penetrate 
deeply into the rocks and aid in their decomposition and 
the production of soil, from which further vegetation 
may grow.® 

Professor LeConte states that rocks 5 or 6 miles in 
thickness have been removed by erosion in many places, 
and that sculpturing of the mountains by the elements 
has removed much more than now remains. 

Rocks have been eroded, worked over, washed down 
into the seas, deposited as sedimentary rocks on the sea 
bottoms, and again elevated into mountains, eroded and 
disintegrated and washed down again and again. Thus 
sea bottoms are pushed up and made into lofty mountains, 
carrying with them the evidences of their aquatic origin 
in the sea shells, corals and aquatic plants in fossil form; 
and lofty mountains are disintegrated and removed till 
the place which once knew them is a level plain. From 
30,000,000 to 50,000,000 years is a moderate estimate of 
the time required to complete erosions which are evident 
on the western continent. 

Between the Archzan and the Palzozoic formations is 
an immense interval of time, the geologic records of which 
are mostly lost. (Fig. X, opp. p. 72.) 

We have abundant evidence that the relative position 
of sea and land surface is constantly changing, though at 
present perhaps not with that cataclysmic suddenness 
which characterized early geologic eras. There are places 
in Italy where the coastline has changed at least 20 feet 
within historic times. 

There are points in Scandinavia and Chili and Pata- 
gonia where the old sea beaches are 600, 1,180, 2,075 and 
1,300 feet above the present sea levels, conditions which 
are proved by the presence in old raised beaches of 


8 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 286. 


76 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


barnacles and sea shells, and evidences of aquatic plants.* 

Greenland is slowly sinking. Can this be due to the 
fact that the crust of the earth is pliable or elastic, and is 
bending in as the result of the great weight of ice which 
overlies that country? 

Mountains are sometimes made by the forcing up of 
immense masses of rock by the lateral and internal pres- 
sure produced by the cooling and contracting of the earth’s 
crust. Masses of rock 40,000 feet in thickness have thus 
been forced up and folded over other strata of rock, so 
that the original relative position has been reversed. 
Sometimes lava has been forced over or between these 
different strata, and, by its heat and chemical action, has 
completely changed the appearance and character of the 
contiguous rocks. In the highlands of Scotland some 
strata are slid 10 miles over others, and in the Rocky 
Mountains the Cambrian formation is slid 7 miles over 
the Cretaceous formation. (Fig. X, opp. p. 72.) In 
Georgia the Cambrian is in contact with the Carbonif- 
erous.2 There are many instances of this sort. Where 
a large amount of sediment is being brought down to the 
sea coast by the great rivers of the earth, the coast is 
slowly sinking. This is the case at Manhattan Island and 
the New Jersey coast, at the mouths of the Mississippi 
and Amazon Rivers, and at numerous points along the 
eastern coast of North America.® 

The history of this phenomenon shows that when the 
sediment has accumulated to the depth of 30,000 or 40,000 
feet, the earth’s crust has given way or yielded to the 
immense lateral and internal pressure, and has moved in 
the direction of least resistance, upwards, and a range 
of mountains has been formed. 

A theory,!® which seems tenable, accounts for this se- 


7 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 140. 
8 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 267. 
9 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 143. 

10 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 274, 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 77 


quence of events as follows: The immense weight of 
this 40,000 feet of sediment slowly bends in the earth’s 
crust, subjecting it more and more to the intense heat of 
the earth’s core, until the crust is partly melted and 
weakened to the point where it can no longer resist the 
lateral pressure. With this accumulated sediment come 
up also immense masses of the subjacent rock and great 
quantities of melted lava. Perhaps the lava does not 
burst through the rock and reach the surface, forming a 
volcano and flowing over the surrounding country in great 
lava fields, but simply cools and solidifies in the bowels 
of the mountain, of which it ultimately forms the core. 

“The mountain ranges were once marginal sea bot- 
toms,” 11 as in the case of the Alps, which were marginal 
sea bottoms in the Mesozoic era and early Tertiary ages. 
Where parallel mountain ranges are found, they were 
each of them once old, deep sea bottoms, those nearest 
the present seacoast being the youngest. 

We must remember that the mountains which we see 
today are only the remnants of their former glory, as 
much more has been removed by erosion than remains. 
The Catskill Mountains are all that is left of an extended 
plateau 4,000 feet or more in height, and the Adirondacks 
are the remains of great elevations weathered to the 
present altitudes.1? 

It is probable that the earth’s crust is now so thick and 
solid and strong that it will experience no more of these 
cataclysms which have turned continents into sea bottoms, 
and sea bottoms into fertile plains, and erected lofty 
mountains where before was a placid inland sea. Some 
of our mountains are still growing, some are entirely 
worn away, so that only the scientist can know of their 
former existence. Some are in the process of decay. 

The Paleozoic era (Fig. X, opp. p. 72) terminated, or 


11 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 272. 
12 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 261. 


78 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


at least its termination was marked by the great Appa- 
lachian revolution: when the Appalachian system of 
mountains rose from the sea and a continent was born 
which connected South America, Africa, Australia and 
India and the Antarctic continent. 

The geologic record at this point is very incomplete, 
and for a long period, perhaps millions of years, we are 
unable to tell what God was doing to prepare the earth 
for the habitation of man. At this time the sea lines or 
coasts were greatly changed on both the Atlantic and 
the Pacific sides of the western hemisphere, and the great 
internal Cretaceous sea was formed, which’ practically 
filled what we now call the basins of the Mississippi River 
and its tributaries. 

In the same way, the Rocky Mountain revolution 
marked the end of the Mesozoic era (Fig. X, opp. p. 72), 
and the interior Cretaceous sea ceased to exist, as its 
bottom was elevated and became the great interior plain 
of the United States, and the great Rocky Mountain 
chain rose from the sea. 

Among the many peculiar conditions found in rocks is 
slaty cleavage, where the rock can be easily split along 
parallel lines. This is undoubtedly due to great pressure 
at right angles to the plane of cleavage, and where this 
rock is found near the surface it indicates that the great 
mountains that compressed it have been eroded and 
washed away. 

We see that while the rocks and the mountains are be- 
ing worn away and are disappearing in some places, in 
other places they are being made, and are slowly growing 
into the same immense thicknesses which were produced 
in former geologic ages. 

According to Professor LeConte,!* sea bottoms are 
filling up at the rate of about 4 inches in 5,000 years, and 
the deep Atlantic has been making chalk at this rate ever 


13 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 427. 
14 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 74. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 79 


since the Cretaceous period. This chalky bottom is con- 
tinuous with the chalk of Europe. At this rate, it will 
take a long time to fill up the oceans, which are at some 
places 12,000 to 18,500 feet in depth. 

There is an undoubtedly close relationship between 
volcanoes and earthquakes, though either may exist inde- 
pendently of the other, and the exact causes of each are 
not always so apparent that scientists are in complete 
agreement. 

Volcanoes are undoubtedly vent holes through which 
escape the gases, steam and melted matters from an in- 
ternal furnace whose heat is more than 8,000°, sufficient 
to fuse all substances. Some scientists have thought that 
volcanoes had their source in the actual core of the earth, 
which, if it is not in a state of fluidity, under the in- 
calculable pressure to which it is subjected and which 
holds it in place, immediately becomes a fluid or a gas 
when that pressure is removed. Immense quantities of 
deadly explosive gases are emitted by volcanoes in action, 
such as hydrogen, sulphurated hydrogen, carbon dioxide 
and innumerable compound explosive gases, the exact 
nature of which is not known. 

Electricity in amounts beyond estimation is developed 
by the chemical and mechanical action of such tremendous 
forces, and, as a result, lightning and thunder, such as are 
experienced nowhere else on earth, are reported by those 
who have witnessed these displays of Nature’s methods. 

Immense quantities of water and steam also result 
from these eruptions, so much that it has been claimed 
that immense fissures in the bottom of the oceans must 
allow great quantities of sea water to flow into the internal 
furnace, which, being converted into superheated steam, 
was a principal cause of the volcanic explosion. This 
theory may be correct, but there seem to be some strong 
objections to it, and it appears more likely that this im- 
mense volume of water is formed anew from the hydrogen 


80 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


and oxygen which form such a considerable proportion 
of the escaping gases. 

We know that in the intense heat of the sun there are 
no chemical compounds, and we may be sure that the 
internal heat of the earth is sufficient to prevent a mar- 
riage between the hydrogen and oxygen which unite to 
form water as soon as they escape to our outer air. 

May we not see, in a kettle of boiling porridge on any 
kitchen range, a demonstration of the volcanic history 
of the earth? When the porridge is boiling violently 
we see constant eruptions on its surface of steam and 
the heated mass which mount up to various heights. As 
the porridge cools, the eruptions become less frequent 
and less explosive until they finally cease. So, when this 
earth was a boiling, fluid mass, explosions were constant 
all over its surface, but now it has cooled till we only 
occasionally see a bubble rise to the surface, and we call 
this bubble a volcanic eruption. By and by they will cease 
entirely. 

Other theories of volcanic action have been advanced, 
and it has been thought by some that volcanoes were en- 
tirely surface phenomena, not connected with the “in- 
ternal core below,” but simply eruptive pimples upon the 
face of mother earth. 

As the earth cools it must of necessity contract, and 
as a result immense fissures or cracks occur in its crust, 
and these cracks enable one side to slip over and often 
on top of the other; sometimes one side is pushed up many 
feet. These slips are accompanied by a more or less 
violent agitation of the earth’s crust, which is a second 
form of earthquake, and the form of most frequent oc- 
currence during historic times. This latter form of earth- 
quake is a daily happening. The tremendous internal and 
external explosions which precede and accompany vol- 
canic eruptions often cause a great trembling and up- 
heaval of the crust of the earth, which is one kind of 
earthquake. The lavas which are thrown out by these 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 81 


different convulsions of the earth are true glass mixtures, 
or multiple silicates. 

Before the crust had formed about the cooling earth it 
can hardly be said that an atmosphere existed, though 
various gases were being constantly emitted from its sur- 
face. But when a crust had finally encircled the globe to 
the extent that it was a fairly permanent covering, the 
gases that composed its atmosphere were ammonia, fluor- 
ides, chlorides, sulphur, hydrogen, sulphurous acid, car- 
bon monoxide and carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and, com- 
paratively early in the process, vapor of water. Of 
course, no animal or vegetable life could exist in such an 
atmosphere. 

It is probable that all the oxygen of our atmosphere was 
supplied by the decomposition of carbon monoxide and 
carbon dioxide, and it is certain that these gases were 
emitted from the cooling earth and were thrown out in 
great quantities by the innumerable volcanoes.® 

The carbon was removed from the atmosphere to some 
extent by the formation of limestone (carbonate of lime), 
but much more was removed by the vegetation, which was 
luxuriant for millions of years, and which, during the 
Carboniferous age (Fig. X, opp. p. 72) reached a pro- 
fusion which we can hardly imagine. This vegetation was 
tropical all over the earth, equally luxuriant at the poles 
and at the equator, for a thick blanket of carbonic acid 
gas and aqueous vapor kept a uniform climate and un- 
varying temperature on all parts of the earth’s surface. 
It is probable that the blanket of carbon dioxide and 
watery vapor kept the temperature of the atmosphere 
unvarying for hundreds of millions of years,1® and cer- 
tainly during the Carboniferous age the climate was warm, 
stagnant, humid, uniform, and the vegetation universally 
tropical.1* 

Of course, the more land there was above the surface 


15 The Destinies of the Stars, Arrhenius, pp. 168-169-170-171. 
16 The Destinies of the Stars, Arrhenius, p. 175. 
17 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 396. 


82 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


of the seas, the more vegetation there would be, and, con- 
sequently, the more rapidly carbon would be extracted 
from the atmosphere. 

It was necessary that this luxuriant vegetation should 
flourish for a long period of years in order that the im- 
mense coal deposits could be formed for the use of civil- 
ized man, and that the petroleum and natural gas forma- 
tions which are proving of such inestimable value to man, 
might be accumulated. While it seems probable that all 
these hydrocarbons, which we designate as crude oil, rock 
oil, or petroleum, were formed from coal by some sort of 
metamorphosis or distillation which we do not entirely 
understand ; they may have been formed in the bowels of 
the earth by chemical processes and pressures which are 
equally beyond our ken. 

We have seen that probably for hundreds of millions 
of years a blanket of carbon dioxide and watery vapor 
kept the temperature of the earth uniformly tropical over 
its entire surface, but that vegetation gradually absorbed 
the carbon, leaving the oxygen free in the atmosphere. 
By an entirely different process the atmosphere was freed 
of a large portion of its aqueous vapor. When the orbit 
of the earth was at its most elliptical form, the earth 
would be so far from the sun when it was in aphelion that 
the intense cold would precipitate most of the moisture, 
either in the form of snow or ice or water, and then, for 
the first time in the history of our planet since a crust 
formed about it, the sun would shine. 

It is probable that there were no climate zones until 
the Eocene period, the climate being uniform over all the 
earth.18 The protection afforded from frost by a blanket 
of watery vapor is often noticeable in our time in the 
temperate zones during Spring or Fall. If the night is 
cloudy or foggy, no damage will be done vegetation, but 
if, the temperature being the same, it be clear and the 
stars are shining, serious havoc may be wrought by a 
killing frost. 

18 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 513. 


CHAPTER VI 


The preparation of the earth’s surface for the habita- 
tion of man was a process requiring untold millions of 
years for its completion. Not only had the great mass to 
cool on its surface until a crust would form, but on this 
solid crust of Plutonic rock of unknown thickness, sedi- 
mentary rocks many miles in thickness had to be deposited 
in sea bottoms, often at the slow rate of 5 inches in 6,000 
years. Then eruptive volcanic rock was often poured out 
over the earth’s crust many thousands of feet thick, and, 
as a result of heat and pressure, metamorphosis of rock 
took place in many places, and all kinds of rock were 
piled up and turned over and twisted in every conceivable 
state of confusion. These rocks then had to be polished, 
ground down and disintegrated, and a soil prepared for 
the growth of vegetation. After millions of years of un- 
exampled luxuriance this vegetation was buried deep till 
it was slowly converted into coal and petroleum and gas 
for the use of mankind. 

In all these processes of preparation, water was perhaps 
the most important factor; first as fog or vapor, then as 
fluid, and last as ice. The vapor, by its constant supply 
of moisture, favored that abundance of vegetation which 
made the coal seams possible, while the fluid water dis- 
solved the rocks and washed down into the valleys and sea 
bottoms the soil which made vegetation possible and the 
sediments which formed a portion of the sedimentary 
rocks. 

How much was done by the action of ice we, perhaps, 
cannot certainly state, but we know that ice was a potent 
factor in grinding down the mountains and pulverizing 
the rock meal, which is a large constituent of the soils 
of the earth. 

83 


84 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


At the present time the accumulation of ice about the 
South Pole and at many places within the Antarctic circle 
is probably 6 miles in thickness, and covers an area of 
from 4,000,000 to 8,000,000 square miles. This ice cap 
melts appreciably during the Antarctic summer, but not 
more than 20 to 30 feet are removed in this way each 
season, while more than that accumulates each winter. 

At the present time Greenland is covered with an ice 
sheet from 3,000 feet to 6,000 feet in thickness, and this 
mass is moving toward the sea in every direction from 
its center. The Antarctic ice moves steadily from the 
Pole to the seas, irrespective of the configuration of the 
country. And from this continental mass icebergs nearly 
2 miles in thickness and 3 miles in length have broken 
off, and have been found by navigators floating in the 
open ocean.? 

These icebergs are so large that they have been mis- 
taken for islands by more than one navigator. As these 
icebergs float only from I-7 to 1-12 above water, this 
mistake might easily be made. 

There is abundant evidence that in the northern hemis- 
phere the ice has been equally thick and has covered an 
equally extensive area, and these ice ages have repeatedly 
occurred, alternating between the northern and southern 
hemispheres. Some of the ice ages have been longer and 
more extensive and more severe than others. How many 
of them have occurred it is impossible to tell, but probably 
more than scientists have generally supposed. During 
the last glacial period in the northern hemisphere the ice 
between the St. Lawrence River and Hudson Bay was 
12,000 feet thick, and the ice over the States of New 
York, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire was 
5,000 feet and up to perhaps twice that thickness. This 
ice moved slowly toward the south, grinding up the rock 


1The Ice Age in North America, Wright. Floating Ice Pic- 
ture, p. 107. 
2 The Ice Age in North America, Wright, p. 164. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 85 


beneath it and transporting portions hundreds of miles. 
It moved toward the south because the immense and ac- 
cumulating pressure at the north forced it to move in the 
direction of least resistance, which was toward the warmer 
zones; and the centrifugal force developed by the rota- 
tion of the earth on its axis would have a tendency to 
force the ice toward the equator. 

Long Island and Block Island are portions of the 
terminal moraine of this great continental glacier. On 
Block Island may be seen large masses of granite which 
were torn off from the granite ledges of New Hampshire 
and transported to their present location by ice sheets 
thousands of feet in thickness. 

In various parts of New England and New York State 
boulders of great size, weighing 10,000 tons or more, have 
been transported across deep valleys, and are now found 
hundreds of feet above sea level, whose origin in the 
ledges of rock far to the north can be determined by their 
composition.® 

In going east by train from Albany on the Boston and 
Albany Railroad, the traveler will notice the white marble 
boulders in the cuts made for the railroad and over the 
fields. These marble boulders were broken off by the 
ice from the marble ledges of Vermont, many miles to the 
north, and transported in and under the ice to their 
present resting places. Moreover, they were smoothed 
and polished and often grooved and scratched by the ice, 
and by the action of the water produced by the melting 
ice. 

As he goes farther east along the same line of travel, 
the observer will notice that there are no more marble 
boulders, but that the boulders are of granite, which have 
been brought down by the ice from the granite ledges of 
New Hampshire. These large and hard pieces of rock, as 
they have been borne along under the weight of 5,000 feet 


3 The Ice Age in North America, Wright, pp. 206-207-208-209- 


86 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


of ice, have acted as immense cutting tools, and we find 
deep grooves in the rock, extending mostly from north 
to south. John Burroughs reports finding them near his 
home on the Hudson; they may be found in various parts 
of eastern New York and New England, and on the ex- 
posed rock in Bronx Park in New York City are some 
very beautiful and characteristic markings made by this 
great graving tool. 

These enormous ice caps have not been present at the 
same time around both Poles of the earth, but have al- 
ternated about once in 21,000 years. At the present time 
the northern hemisphere is having its winter while the 
earth is in perihelion, that is, when it is nearest the sun; 
consequently, we are having mild and short winters and 
long summers, while the southern hemisphere is having 
long and severe winters and short summers, because its 
winters occur while the earth is farthest from the sun, 
and its summers while the earth is at perihelion or nearest 
the sun. 

There is good and abundant scientific authority * for 
the belief that the ice cap in the northern hemisphere 
has been heavy enough at times to change the center of 
gravity of the earth, so that the North Pole would point 
to a lower place in the heavens than at present, and the 
plane of the earth’s equator would make a greater angle 
with the plane of the ecliptic than at present. This might 
cause the waters of the ocean to flow over the land and 
account for the submergence to the depth of 1,000 or 
2,000 feet of large portions of the northern hemisphere. 
When the southern hemisphere developed its ice cap and 
that on the northern hemisphere melted, the earth might, 
and probably would, tip the other way, the North Pole up 
and the South Pole down; then the submerged land of 
the North would rise from the sea, and large land areas 
in the southern hemisphere would disappear. This may, 
and probably does, account for the oscillation of sea levels 


4\Croll, Climate and Time, p. 389. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 87 


and the apparent elevation and depression of land sur- 
faces. 

This may be, and probably is, the explanation of the 
fact that more than once in geologic times the North Sea 
has been dry, England and Ireland have been connected 
by dry land, and England united to the continent. This 
would give an opportunity for tropical animals to migrate 
to the British Isles, as we have positive evidence that at 
some periods they have done. 

“Mr. Croll believes that the last great glacial period 
occurred 240,000 years ago, and lasted 160,000 years.” ® 
With respect to more ancient glacial periods, probably 
such occurred during the Miocene and Eocene forma- 
tions, not to mention more ancient formations. Mr. Croll 
believes that whenever the northern hemisphere passes 
through a cold period, the temperature of the southern 
hemisphere is raised. This conclusion throws so much 
light on geological questions that I am strongly inclined 
to trust in it.’ Mr. Croll has estimated ® that a diminu- 
tion of 470 feet in the thickness of the Antarctic ice would 
raise the level of the sea at the latitude of Glasgow 25 
feet. Now, as ice will barely move on a slope of 1°, it 
would appear that the ice at the South Pole might 
probably be 24 miles thick. If 2 miles of the thickness 
of ice at the South Pole were melted, and a similar thick- 
ness accumulated at the North Pole, it would so change 
the centre of gravity of the earth that the sea would rise 
312 feet at the latitude of Edinburgh. 

Just prior to and during the early part of the last ice 
age, the surface of the land in North America was from 
1,000 to 2,000 feet above its present level. What caused 
the sea to rise or the land to sink? Was it because the 
weight of ice within and south of the Arctic circle had 
tipped the North Pole down and changed the centre of 
gravity of the earth, or was the crust of the earth still 


5 Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, p. 397. 
6 Prehistoric Times, Sir John Lubbock, p. 427. 


88 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


elastic, so that it was depressed by the weight of ice? 
This latter is or was the opinion of Warren Upham. 
Whatever the causes, we find sea beaches on the eastern 
margins of North America from 75 feet to 1,000 feet 
above present sea levels, and this condition has been found 
in almost all parts ofthe earth. 

Probably all parts of the earth have been subjected to 
glaciation at some time in its history. 

Holland, in his Presidential address before the British 
Association in 1914,’ assumed that during the Algonkian 
age (Fig. X, opp. p. 72), an ice or glacial period existed 
which covered the entire globe. There are evidences of 
extensive glaciation in New Zealand and Australia, and 
North America, at the last ice age, was covered down to 
the latitude of New York City, and thence across the 
continent ; Europe, at different times, has been thoroughly 
scraped by ice. Of course, each ice age pretty nearly 
obliterates the evidences of previous glaciation. 

There are undeniable evidences of glaciation in all the 
ages of the earth from the Algonkian up; in Cambrian, 
Silurian, Sub-carboniferous, Carboniferous, Permian, 
Cretaceous, Miocene, Pliocene and Eocene ages. (Fig. 
X, opp. p. 72.) The last great ice age in the northern 
hemisphere probably commenced 240,000 years ago and 
lasted 160,000 years, terminating about 80,000 years ago. 

Of course, this age of ice, refrigeration and death does 
not come on in a decade nor in a century. It creeps on 
slowly from one century to another, gradually driving 
before it towards the equator all forms of life, and oblit- 
erating every feature of the landscape. It goes over the 
tops of the mountains, and the valleys are filled up to one 
universal level. 

What has happened so many times before will occur 
again. ““The mills of God grind slowly, and they grind 
exceedingly small,” but they are sure to grind, and the 
time will come, perhaps 150,000 years from this century, 


7 The Destiny of the Stars, Arrhenius, p. 174. 


Earth Summer 





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GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 89 


when all the monuments and evidences of civilization in 
Europe and America will be covered miles deep with ice, 
grinding them to powder. Then surely Macaulay’s Anti- 
quarian from New Zealand will find no London Bridge 
on which to stand and no ruins of St. Paul to sketch; 
the traveler from distant regions will find no mouldering 
pedestal upon which to decipher the name of England’s 
proudest statesman, and there will be no ruined dome of 
England’s proudest temple above which savage hymns 
may be chanted. The civilizations of the north will be 
driven from their present moorings to seek habitable 
places south of the equator. When this ice age shall have 
passed away there will certainly be a new earth, and per- 
haps the evolution of man’s spiritual and moral natures 
will by that time have brought about a new Heaven upon 
earth. 

The cause of the ice ages has been one of the puzzles 
of science and still remains one of the discussed problems. 
Sir Charles Lyell thought it might be explained by the 
distribution of land and water, and that the various ele- 
vations and depressions of land surfaces were the causes 
of the ice accumulations. It seems probable that Sir 
Charles mistook the effect for the cause. While these 
phenomena undoubtedly had much to do with temperature, 
it can hardly be thought that they were the only or 
principal cause of the immense glaciations of the northern 
hemisphere, especially as equal glaciations are now occur- 
ring in the Antarctic regions. There is no doubt but that 
luxuriant and tropical vegetation has prevailed over long 
periods up to the Poles, and conversely an Arctic climate 
has prevailed down into low latitudes. 

According to Croll, the temperature of interstellar space 
is 239°F. below zero, and that would be the temperature 
of the sustace of the earth if there were no sun. So it 
has been suggested that perhaps the earth passes through 
colder parts of space at times, which might account for 
ice accumulations on its surface. Someone has suggested 


90 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


that the sun may be a variable star, and that many times 
more heat may have been emitted from its surface at some 
periods than at others. But the records of the glaciations 
show that they were not dependent upon any such chance 
occurrences, but on the orderly processes of nature. 


Every detail of the ice ages can be explained by the 
changes in the shape of the earth’s orbit. The orbit of 
the earth, or the path which it follows in its yearly 
journey around the sun, is not a circle, but an ellipse, 
with the sun at one of its foci. The shape of this ellipse 
is constantly changing. At present it is approaching the 
shape of the circle as seen in A (Plate W, opp. p. 88), 
with the earth at perihelion or at the end nearest the sun 
in the winter of the northern hemisphere. It traverses 
the line 1, m, n, 0, p, q, summer occurring when the earth 
is at the long end of the ellipse, or aphelion. At present 
the sun is 3,000,000 miles nearer the earth in winter than 
in summer, consequently, we are having comparatively 
short, mild winters and long summers. But the earth not 
only revolves about the sun in the path 1, m, n, 0, p, q, 
once a year, but, as a result of the phenomenon called by 
astronomers the precession of the equinoxes, the seasons 
also slowly move around with the earth in the same path, 
making the complete circuit of the ellipse in about 21,000 
years. In Figure F it will be noted that winter of the 
northern hemisphere has gotten about half-way around to 
X. When winter gets around to X (Fig. C, opp. p. 88), 
then the earth is having its Arctic winter while it is at 
the long end of the ellipse. 

It will be noticed that in Figures B and C the orbit 
of the earth is more elliptical than in A and F, and it 
takes the seasons about 21,000 years to make this circuit. 
When the Arctic winter is occurring at X (Fig. C, opp. p. 
88) there will be great accumulations of ice in the north- 
ern regions, which probably would be about 5,000 years 
in accumulating and 5,000 years in melting. 

But the alternations of winter from perihelion to aphel- 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK QI 


ion during a cycle of 21,000 years does not explain all the 
variations of climate which are produced by the varying 
amounts of the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit. The 
winter solstice was in aphelion 11,700 years ago; 33,300 
years ago, and 61,300 years ago.8 

In addition to the conditions brought about when the 
orbit of the earth is as represented in A, B, C and F, we 
have at long intervals a condition which may be repre- 
sented by D and E. In these Figures the earth’s orbit 
is represented as it exists when it has reached its greatest 
eccentricity. In Figure E it will be noted that the Arctic 
winter occurs in aphelion, at which time the earth is 14,- 
000,000 miles farther from the sun than it is when it is 
at the short end of the ellipse, and the Arctic winters are 
forty-four days longer than the summers, as may be sur- 
mised when it is noticed how far the earth has to travel 
around this long end of the ellipse. It is easy to see that, 
both on account of the prolonged winter and on account 
of the greater distance from the sun, the conditions would 
be ideal for the production of great masses of ice.? 

The periods of greatest eccentricity of the earth’s orbit 
have occurred at long intervals through a remote past. 
The following dates are given by Croll: 1° 100,000 years 
ago; 200,000; 750,000; 850,000; 950,000; 1,150,000; 
1,250,000; 1,500,000; 1,850,000; 1,950,000; 2,500,000; 
2,600,000 years ago. These dates undoubtedly represent 
the time of maximum accumulations of ice, with numer- 
ous variations of heat and cold, advances and recessions 
of the ice sheet. 

The periods in the future when the orbit of the earth 
will reach these extremes of eccentricity are given by Mr. 
Croll as 150,000 years hence; 400,000; 500,000; 600,000; 
800,000; 900,000; 1,000,000 years hence. With winter 
occurring in aphelion at these times of great eccentricity, 

8 Climate and Time, Croll, p. 409. 


9 Climate and Time, Croll, p. 313. 
10 The Ice Age in North America, Wright, pp. 416-419, 


Q2 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


there is every reason to suppose that ice ages, as severe 
as any in the past, would be the result. 

With the conditions as in Figure D, with winter occur- 
ring in perihelion, the earth would be 14,212,700 miles 
nearer the sun in winter than in summer. This would 
almost entirely obliterate the difference between winter 
and summer, and summer would be longer than winter by 
forty-four days.™ 

The evidences of the ice ages are numerous in New 
England and New York state, and may be seen along 
almost any country road. Drumlins, which are sub-glacial 
ground moraines, extending in the direction of the ice 
movements, are frequently detected. Small local terminal 
moraines are often found at the termination of valleys, 
marking the recession of the ice at that point. Kettle 
holes may frequently be seen, marking the places where 
masses of ice were melted which had first been covered 
by glacial debris.1* Many drumlins have also been found 
iniireland+* 

The Finger Lakes of central New York, and the in- 
numerable lakes all over New England and New York 
state are basins scooped out by the ice, whose outlets have 
been damned up by glacial debris or terminal moraines. 
These lakes are gradually filling up and draining out, and 
by and by will disappear. Their presence is indicative of 
comparatively new topography. 

Since the last ice age numerous valleys have been cut 
out by the rivers, and deep gorges have been cut through 
the rocks. The most noted of these is the gorge below 
the Falls at Niagara, which has been cut back by the river 
from Lake Ontario since the ice of the last glaciation 
melted. An equally interesting, though not so grand, 
gorge has been cut through the rock by the Mohawk 
River at Cohoes, N. Y. Deep gorges, cut by compara- 

11 Climate and Time, Croll, p. 422. 


12 The Ice Age in North America, Wright, p. 130. 
13 The Ice Age in North America, Wright, p. 258. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 93 


tively small streams through boulder clay, sand and gravel, 
are to be seen wherever the ice age deposited great 
amounts of glacial debris. 

That a great river once emptied into the valley of the 
Hudson below Albany is evident. The range of low 
mountains extending southwest of Albany to west of 
Schenectady marks its southern bank. This old river 
bed was obliterated, or filled in by materials scraped off 
the north country by the ice, and the Mohawk River had 
to find a new outlet farther to the north, at Cohoes. 

Lake Ontario, which used to empty through Oneida 
Lake and the valley of the Mohawk into the valley of the 
Hudson, found its old path to the sea filled up with 
glacial scrapings, and had to find a new outlet through 
the St. Lawrence River. 

When land surfaces were much higher than at present, 
many rivers cut down their beds to the level of the ocean, 
and subsequent land depression has left many of these 
river beds below the level of the sea. Illustrations of 
these drowned rivers, as they are called, are the Hudson, 
Chesapeake, Delaware and St. Lawrence. 

These and innumerable other processes of Nature were 
for the purpose of preparing the earth for the habitation 
of man and for his further development. When God 
had prepared everything for his reception, then man ap- 
peared and proceeded to work out his salvation according 
to the established laws of evolution. 

While cool and habitable upon its surface, the internal 
fires of the earth are still burning, and at a depth of 2 
miles we should find a temperature of about 212° F., 
which we may suppose continues to increase as we go 
deeper. 

The rocks had to be disintegrated and worked over 
to make soil for vegetation, as no animal life could be 
supported without it, and for this purpose water, carbonic 
acid and oxygen are the three great agents. The action 


04. GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


of bacteria and vegetable mould are also important fac- 
tors in soil formation. 

The distribution of heat, all of which is derived from 
the sun, has been provided for, not only by the movements 
-of currents of air, but also by the movement of great 
ocean currents. According to Croll,1* the Gulf Stream 
is 5 miles wide, 1,000 feet deep, moves at the rate of 4 
miles an hour, and transports daily 66,908,160,000,000 
cubic feet of water. At least half as much heat is con- 
veyed by the Gulf Stream alone from the tropics to the 
Arctic as is received from the sun in those regions, and 
as a large part of the heat of the Gulf Stream is received 
from the southern hemisphere, this is an additional reason 
why extreme cold prevails there. It has even been assert- 
ed that 1/5 of the heat of the North Atlantic is due to 
the Gulf Stream. The waters of the deep sea, returning 
from the Arctic regions to the Tropics, are nearly ice cold. 
In this way are temperatures modified, the north is 
warmed and the south is cooled. 

Croll is responsible for the further statement } that for 
85 days, from May toth to August 3rd, the heat received 
from the sun at the North Pole is greater than that re- 
ceived at the equator. It should further be remembered 
that zones of temperature are of comparatively recent 
origin, as they did not exist before the Eocene period. 
(Fig. X, opp. p. 72.) 

Everywhere the soils are moving toward the sea, wash- 
ed down by the rains and carried largely by the rivers. 
Croll and Geikie have estimated that the denudation 
amounts to I foot in 6,000 years or 1,000 feet in 6 million 
years, and it has been asserted by Mr. Alfred Taylor that 
the Mississippi basin is being lowered 1 foot in 10,000 
years. In some parts of Asia there are deposits 2,000 
feet thick which have been carried by the wind to their 
present position, and in many other parts of the earth 


14 Climate and Time, Croll, p. 24. 
15 Climate and Time, Croll, p. 65. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 95 


currents of air and winds are responsible for great accu- 
mulations of soil. 

Buried river channels are found in numerous places in 
England and Scotland; the Fiords of Norway are 
drowned river valleys which often may be traced far out 
to sea. 

The crust of this old earth is not stable yet; in some 
places it is rising and in some sinking. The Thousand 
Islands of the upper St. Lawrence have risen approxi- 
mately 300 feet in post-glacial times, before which Lake 
Ontario was an arm of the sea. The eastern end of 
Lake Ontario is still rising. The old Iroquois beach, from 
Richland to Watertown, N. Y., has a pitch of 5 feet to 
the mile, and this tilting is still going on at the rate of 5 
inches to 100 miles in a century.1® If this tipping, which 
also involves the territory of the upper Great Lakes, con- 
tinues, it will result in throwing the waters of these lakes, 
through the Chicago River, into the Mississippi. 


16 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 586. 


CHAPTER VII 


We hold to the opinion that this earth was designed 
for man. That the Creator, by the processes of nature, 
a few of which have been briefly described, has prepared 
the soil and the rocks, the treasures of iron and copper, 
gold and silver, coal and oil, which He has hidden beneath 
the soil and the rocks, so that all the material comforts 
needed by man may be easily supplied, and he may be left 
free to develop his intellectual, moral and spiritual natures, 
until a Heaven on earth has been attained. Toward this 
ideal perfection man is slowly moving. Men are in a 
hurry sometimes and cannot wait, but God is never hur- 
ried, and He can wait. 

In some manner which science has never explained, or- 
ganic life was introduced upon the earth. We have been 
taught these many centuries that it was a direct act of 
creation which brought each type or species of plant or 
animal life into existence, but this is not the way God’s 
Book reads, and the men who taught this heresy never 
tried to peruse it. Many theories have been advanced to 
explain the advent of organic life, but none of them has 
been proven. “The more modern scientific opinion is that 
life arose from a recombination of forces pre-existing in 
the cosmos. To hold to this opinion that life does not 
represent the entrance of either a new form of energy, or 
of a new series of laws, but is simply another step in the 
general evolutionary process, is certainly consistent with 
the development of mechanics, physics and chemistry since 
the time of Newton, and of evolutionary thought since 
Buffon, Lamarck and Darwin.” 2 

“Life probably originated on the continents, either in 
the moist crevices of the rocks or soils, in the fresh waters 


2 The Origin and Evolution of Life, Henry F. Osborne, p. 2. 
96 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 97 


of continental pools, or in the slightly saline waters of the 
primordial seas.” 3 

Richter, Kelvin and Arrhenius all have suggested that 
living germs may have reached the earth from the inter- 
stellar space through which the earth is moving at the 
rate of 1,000,000 miles a day, driven in by meteors or the 
pressure of light or gravitation. If we are given the liv- 
ing germ, the theories and demonstrations of Mr. Darwin 
will explain all the rest. “I believe that all animals are 
descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and 
plants from an equal or lesser number. Analogy would 
lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all 
animals and plants are descended from some one proto- 
type; but analogy may be a deceitful guide.” * 


“Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis is not, so far as I am aware, 
inconsistent with any known biological fact; on the con- 
trary, if admitted, the facts of development, of com- 
parative anatomy, of geographical distribution and of 
paleontology become connected together, and exhibit a 
meaning such as they never possessed before; and I for 
one am fully convinced that that hypothesis is as near 
an approximation to the truth as, for example, the hy- 
pothesis of Copernicus was to the true theory of planetary 
motions.” ® 

The geological signs of plant life are coal and iron, and 
these signs are first manifested by the finding of iron in 
the Algonkian formations (Fig. X, opp. p. 72). These 
early specimens of vegetation were acquatic, as there were 
no land plants until the Devonian age, when forests 
prophetic of the luxuriant Carboniferous age were in 
evidence. 

The vast quantities of carbonic acid in the atmosphere 
up to and perhaps through the Carboniferous age would 


3 The Origin and Evolution of Life, Henry F. Osborne, p. 35. 
4 Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, p. 500. 
5 Man’s Place in Nature, Huxley, p. 149. 


98 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


have been fatal to man, and to most of the animal life 
upon earth during historic times; so God had a plan to 
store up this carbon where it would keep and could do 
no harm, and where it would be ready for man’s use 
when he was ready for it. Some of the carbon was stored 
up in limestone, chalk and marble, all of which are car- 
bonate of lime; but probably much more in the luxuriant 
vegetation which went to make the coal measures, the 
natural gas and petroleum oils, without which modern 
civilization could not exist. 

The Carboniferous strata (Fig. X, opp. p. 72) average 
about 3 miles in thickness, and the coal measures are 
from 4,000 to 15,000 feet in thickness. Coal was made 
somehow as follows: Immense quantities of vegetable 
matter accumulated as peat in swamps, over which were 
laid lake or river deposits. Subsidence of the land, caused 
perhaps or probably by an ice age, caused the sea to 
overflow it, and a deposit of limestone was laid over it. 
After thousands of years an upheaval converted this en- 
tire deposit into a mountain, or at least raised it well 
above the sea. This process was perhaps repeated many 
times, which accounts for the layers upon layers of coal 
and limestone and clay. The anthracite coal was pro- 
duced by metamorphosis for the production of which heat 
and pressure are the principal factors. It has been the 
opinion of numerous scientists that a seam of coal a yard 
thick would accumulate in about 8,000 years, and that 
probably 1,000,000 years were required to make the coal 
deposits which are now known to exist. 

According to Croll,® the thickness of a coal seam de- 
pends upon the length of the interglacial period; some- 
times it was 6,000 or 7,000 years, and at other times 16,- 
000 years, largely because perihelion moves more rapidly 
at some times than at others. Sometimes there would be 
warm interglacial periods of perhaps 10,000 years, dur- 
ing which the coal-forming vegetation would be luxuriant; 


6 Climate and Time, Croll, pp. 428 and 425. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 99 


this would be followed by a cold spell of perhaps 10,000 
years, during which there would be glaciation and the 
coming in of the sea and deposits of limestone sediment. 
All this repeated numerous times explains our coal fields. 

The exact nature of the vegetation of the Carbonifer- 
ous age is revealed to us in the trunks, stumps, leaves, 
roots and fruits of the trees and ferns, and all the va- 
rious plants are accurately preserved in the coal in almost 
perfect condition. The following groups are often found: 
gymnosperms, ferns, lepidodendrids, sigillarids and cala- 
marie.’ 

Animal life of a very low form must have been co- 
existent with the early aquatic plants, for vegetation is 
closely dependent upon bacteria for its nitrates, which are 
developed from nitrogen by bacteria.2 In these early 
ages, hundreds of millions of years before climate zones 
were evolved, it is doubtful if the beautiful green which 
we see all about us in the vegetable world was often 
present. The red, blue and violet rays of light which 
are absorbed by the leafy plant are the source of the en- 
ergy which enables the plant to carry on its functions, 
while the green rays are reflected or transmitted, con- 
veying to our eyes its color.? But as there was no sunlight, 
as we know it, simply the diffused light of dense fogs and 
thick, heavy clouds, the green color of vegetation must 
have been very pale. 

The two unmistakable signs of animal life which are 
recorded in God’s Book, are limestone or marble, which 
is metamorphic limestone, and the presence of fossils. 
The limestone accumulated in sea bottoms by the slow 
deposit of the shells of crinoids, coquina, snails, foramin- 
ifera, mollusks and other shellfish, and the bones of fishes. 
This accumulation was slow; centuries were required for 


7 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 372. Plates on 
pp. 372 to 387. 

8 The Origin and Evolution of Life, Henry F. Osborne. 

9 Harold Wagar. 


100 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


the collection of a few inches, but the record left is of the 
greatest interest, and no intelligent person can dispute 
what it shows. God did not make this rock and put these 
shells into it in the places and at the levels where they 
are now found, as was defiantly asserted by a noted divine 
not many years ago. The making of these limestone rocks 
was not a part of six days’ labor, from which the Creator 
rested on the seventh day. God has never rested; He is 
making limestone rock, and, so far as we can tell, all other 
kinds of rock every day. 

The animals which have lived in all the periods of 
geologic history have left their bones imbedded in the 
rocks and soils and caves, and by a study of these bones 
it is possible to know the size and habits of these animals; 
upon what they fed; whether they were carnivorous or 
harbivorous, and, to a great extent, over how much terri- 
tory they wandered. 

The forms of life inhabiting the seas have had much 
to do in constructing the crust of the earth. It is sup- 
posed that limestone is always of organic origin, made 
out of the shells and bones of fishes and out of coral mud, 
which is being deposited at the present time, and has been 
deposited throughout all geologic history over wide areas. 
In this limestone corals are found in all stages of com- 
minution. Corals absorb carbonate of lime from the 
sea water, and grow in the sea much as some forms of 
vegetation grow on the land.!° 

In Silurian ages (Fig. X, opp. p. 72) corals grew in all 
the seas all over the earth, indicating a great uniformity 
of temperature at that time, due to the blanket of car- 
bonic acid gas and watery vapor which then enveloped 
the earth. Calcareous alge are also of importance as 
reef builders in some localities. 

Corals are building up islands over an area of about 
20,000,000 square miles, while this area has been slowly 
sinking for hundreds of thousand of years. The sinking 


10 Flements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 152. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK IOI 


of the sea bottom goes on at practically the same rate 
as the corals build up their islands, for corals cannot live 
at a depth of more than 100 feet below the surface of 
the sea. These corals build up their islands at about the 
rate of 1 foot in a century, at which rate it would require 
from 500,000 to 1,000,000 years to build up many of the 
coral formations. 

In the animal life of this world, as outlined in geologic 
history, we have revealed to us, perhaps more clearly than 
in any other way, the great law of evolution, which is 
fundamental in all God’s operations. Man’s life is so 
short, history is so brief, that the functioning of this great 
law was not suspected until science was able to look mil- 
lions of years into the prehistoric past, and note the slow 
and sure development from one geologic period to another. 

It is apparent that God was not only preparing the 
earth to be a suitable habitation for man, but that He was 
developing the animal kingdom, through millions of forms, 
up to the point where man could emerge from his lowly 
ancestry, and could develop an intellectual and moral and 
spiritual nature, prophetic types of which had been present 
in some of the more highly organized animals. 

Progress never stops, evolution never stops, improve- 
ment never stops. As we read geologic history we learn 
that life in its simplest forms existed way down in the 
Algonkian (Fig. X, opp. p. 72) formations, and that in 
each geologic age more perfect and more complicated 
forms were always taking the places of those forms which 
had preceded them. One of the most astonishing facts 
which we continually observe as one geologic age suc- 
ceeds another is the appearance of prophetic types in the 
animal kingdom; that is, in the anatomical structure, size 
and habits of an animal we find the developing organs 
and habits which evolve into a more perfect form in the 
succeeding age. 

Way down in the Algonkian we find evidences of life. 
In the Cambrian age invertebrates of all classes appear. 


102 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


In the lower Silurian age vertebrates in the form of fishes 
are found, prophetic of the innumerable species of back- 
boned animals which were to possess the world. In the 
upper Silurian the invertebrates were still the dominant 
class, with the vertebrated fishes increasing in importance. 
In the Devonian age we find the fishes the principal class, 
more perfectly developed, and types prophetic of the 
Amphibians which were to be the dominant class of living 
creatures in the late Carboniferous age. These Amphib- 
ians were the connecting link between the fishes and 
teptiles, of which latter class they were prophetic. Birds, 
which evolved from reptiles, first appeared in the Jurassic 
(Fig. X, opp. p. 72), at which period also appeared types 
prophetic of the mammal. These prophetic mammals 
were Marsupials, which incubated their young partly in 
a uterus and completed the later incubation in a sack con- 
taining the mammary glands. Reptiles were the dominant 
class clear up to the Eocene (Fig. X, opp. p. 72), when 
fully developed mammals became the ruling class of 
animals. 


Somewhere along in the early Tertiary age appeared 
the ape or monkey, prophetic of prehistoric man, who 
probably appeared as a beast man in the Pliocene period. 
In the Pleistocene period (Fig. X, opp. p. 72), the evi- 
dences of the presence of man are unmistakable, but not 
until the Psychozoic era did he become the ruling animal 
of the world. Prehistoric man was little better than 
the beasts from which he had evolved. 


In all these countless centuries of development we find 
that God never goes backward, never repeats Himself ; if 
a type becomes extinct, it never reappears.14 This fact 
certainly points to an age of human perfection on earth, 
for from the Algonkian age to the present time there has 
been an unvarying progress in the forms and development 
of animal life, first in the physical, then in the mental; in 


11 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 510. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 103 


recent centuries the moral and the spiritual values have 
slowly assumed their place as the dominant factors in 
the world. Geologic and human history show that God 
has never gone backwards: “His everlasting thought 
moves on.” 

“Rudimentary forms and organs, as found in fossils 
and living animals, are undoubtedly the result of disuse, 
and this condition is hereditary. Nature may be said to 
have taken pains to reveal her scheme of modification by 
means of rudimentary organs of embryological and homol- 
ogous structures, but we are too blind to understand her 
meaning.” 12 Foetal whales have teeth, though the adult 
has no teeth, and there are teeth in the upper jaw of 
unborn calves, which never cut through. 

The geologic record, which is the only record we have 
of times antedating human history, is very imperfect; 
but it is sufficiently complete to demonstrate God’s law 
of evolution, and to show that this law acted continuously 
and efficiently up to the time when the writings of men 
took up the record. These show that this fundamental 
law is as operative today as in any of the ages past. Dar- 
win defines a law of Nature as “The sequence of events, 
as ascertained by us.” 

To the careful observer one of the most obvious facts 
is the universal struggle for existence which is seen every- 
where in organic nature. In the vegetable kingdom one 
plant crowds out another; the hardy tree keeps all the 
sun from its delicate rival, and takes all the virtue from 
the soil, so that the rival perishes. The herbivora in the 
animal kingdom feed upon vegetation, and but for the 
abundance of Nature would destroy it; the carnivora, 
but for this same abundance of Nature, would destroy all 
animal life. The weak and old and feeble are eaten by 
the young and strong. The old lion, who for years has 
been monarch of the forest, is eaten at last by the coward- 
ly hyena. 

12 Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, p. 495. 


104 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


Variations in structure or form, which are in any way 
useful, either for defense or for procuring food, or which 
enable its possessor to survive the vicissitudes of its en- 
vironment, will tend to preserve that individual and en- 
able him to propagate his kind. So, also, any qualities 
or adornments which enable him to attract the opposite 
sex will enable the individual more easily to propagate his 
kind, and hence these qualities or adornments will tend to 
become hereditary. 

“Individuals having any advantage, however slight, over 
others, would have the best chance of surviving and pro- 
creating their kind. On the other hand, we may feel sure 
that any variation in the least degree injurious would tend 
to the destruction of the possessor. This preservation of 
favorable individual differences and variations, and the 
destruction of those that are injurious, I have called 
Natural Selection or the Survival of the Fittest.” 1% 

Protective coloring in insects, worms, birds or animals, 
which renders them inconspicuous and enables them more 
easily to hide from their predatory enemies is of great 
advantage. The qualities in any animal which render the 
individual attractive to members of the opposite sex lead 
to the condition which has been termed sexual selection. 
The songs of birds and their gorgeous plumage come un- 
der this head, and among the carnivora, strength and 
courage and fleetness and skill and cunning seem to be 
qualities that possess great attractiveness to the opposite 
sex; consequently, these qualities are accentuated and are 
hereditary. “In all cases the new and improved forms 
of life tend to supercede and supplant the old and un- 
improved forms.” !4 

“All the living forms of life are the lineal descendants 
of those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch (Fig. 
X, opp. p. 72). We may feel certain that the ordinary 
succession by generation has never once been broken, 


13 Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, p. 74. 
14 Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, p. 314. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 105 


and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. 
Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure 
future of great length. And, as natural selection works 
solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal 
and mental endowments will tend to progress toward 
pertection; 15 

It has been the theory of some, particularly of La- 
marck, that what has been styled the Heredity Chromatin 
was the innate cause producing the inevitable tendency 
which made for perfection in all organic life, independent 
of natural or sexual selection. Darwin was unable to 
agree to this hypothesis that there existed an inherent law 
or force or tendency which led to constant improvement 
and beneficial variations in the development of species. 

This Heredity Chromatin is defined as a protoplasmic 
substance in the nucleus of the cell which perpetuates the 
development of similar ancestral traits or bodily and 
mental characteristics in individuals descended from the 
same ancestry, but separated by vast periods of time and 
reared under entirely different environments. In other 
words, the genesis of new forms and functions is in- 
herent in the chromatin, according to this theory. This 
theory has not been widely accepted by scientists. 

Let us consider these various developments of animal 
life a little more in detail. Animal life was first demon- 
strated in the Cambrian rocks, although it probably ex- 
isted in the Algonkian. In the Cambrian formation there 
are found 400 species, of which 100 are Trilobites, and 
some of these Trilobites were 2 feet in length.16 In the 
Silurian seas life was most abundant. There were great 
varieties of primitive shellfish, and in late Silurian times 
the vertebrated fish appeared. There were chambered 
Cephalopods fifteen feet in length, and Trilobites of com- 
plicated structure and great beauty, having compound 
eyes. 


15 Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, p. 504. 
16 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 312. 


106 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


In the Devonian age (Fig. X, opp. p. 72), fish were 
more prominently developed than previously, as were 
also insects, both having appeared in prophetic types in 
the Silurian age. The fish of this age were the pro- 
genitors of both the fish and amphibians of future ages, 
and were the highest type of animal life, ruling the seas 
as Trilobites and Orthoceratites had in previous ages. 

In the Carboniferous age existed the most powerful 
sharks in the history of the world, and also great numbers 
of sturgeons. This age also produced great numbers of 
insects. Here appeared the first air-breathing animals, 
Amphibians, a prophetic type capable of breathing either 
in the water or the air. 

“In the coal measures of Bavaria are found perfect 
skeletons of an animal 314 feet long, the connecting link 
between Ganoid fishes and Amphibians.” 47 

Among the earliest land vertebrates is the Labyrintho- 
dont, which had both lungs and gills, and thus connected 
the water-breathers with the air-breathers. They were 
armored with bony plates over the body and head, the 
connecting link between the Sauroid fishes which pre- 
ceded them and the Saurian reptiles which succeeded 
them. They mark the point of separation between the 
Amphibians and the fishes.1§ 

The Appalachian revolution, which marked the change 
from the Palzozoic to the Mesozoic eras, also indicates 
the place in geologic history where the record was lost 
for many millenniums, for reasons which it is not easy to 
explain. Paleozoic forms were being replaced by 
Mesozoic forms, which were modified to meet changed 
terrestrial conditions. True reptiles appear, derived from 
the amphibians, and through them the mammals were 
derived. In the late Mesozoic we find a great variety of 
reptiles of large and small sizes and more complicated 


18 Flements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 421. 
17 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 418. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 107 


construction. From these reptiles were derived the birds, 
and at about the same time mammals are first found.’ 

In the Mesozoic era (Fig. X, opp. p. 72), we find rep- 
tiles, birds and mammals of fantastic forms, many of 
them prophetic of the more specialized and perfected 
forms of later periods. In the Jurassic period there were 
flying reptiles; Pterosaurs from 2 to 18 feet in length; 
birds with long tails and toothed jaws like reptiles. Was 
it a birdlike reptile or a reptilian bird? 

The mammals which first appeared in the Jurassic or 
in the upper Triassic were insectivorous Marsupials of a 
reptilian character, a transition or connecting link to true 
mammals.?° 

Some of the tracks found in the sandstones of the Con- 
necticut Valley may be tracks of birds or of reptiles or 
of reptilian birds. In the Jurassic the huge reptiles reach- 
ed their greatest size, and were certainly wonderful speci- 
mens. The Ichthyosaurus was sometimes 40 feet in 
length, and possessed a head 5 feet long; it had 200 huge 
teeth, and eyes 15 inches in diameter, provided with bony 
plates. This reptile was predatory and voracious.?4 

The Dinosaurs of the Jurassic period were the largest 
animals that ever lived. Some of them were 80 feet in 
length. They walked on their hind legs, something like 
birds. Some of these Dinosaurs were small, not larger 
than our common domestic fowls.2 The Stegosaurus 
was a most remarkable reptile. It had two rows of broad, 
bony plates 5 feet in height extending the whole length 
of its back, and 4 spines at the end of its tail. The 
Iguanodon was a herbivorous reptile 30 feet in length, 
weighing more than an elephant. It undoubtedly walked 
on its hind legs.22 The Megalosaur was a formidable 


19 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 430. 
20 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, pp. 466-467. 
21 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 454. 
22 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, pp. 478, 457. 
23 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 458. 


108 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


carnivorous reptile about 30 feet in length. The Ceteo- 
saur was the largest reptile found in Europe. It was 
about 50 feet long and 10 feet high. 

In the Triassic formation, the head of a Mastodon- 
saurus has been found 3 feet long and 2 feet wide.** In 
the Jurassic Crustaceans and Insects also became very 
abundant. 

In the Cretaceous period (Fig. X, opp. p. 72), the rep- 
tilian characteristics were impressed upon most of the 
animal forms; the birds were reptilian in character, and 
the mammals had not yet evolved far, in form, from their 
reptilian ancestors. In Great Britain there were 16 species 
of Dinosaurs, which ranged in length from 20 to 50 feet; 
12 Crocodilians from Io to 50 feet in length, and Enalio- 
saurs and Pterodactyls. In the United States there were 
150 species of reptiles, mostly of gigantic size; these in- 
cluded Mosasaurs, Dinosaurs, Enaliosaurs, Pterosaurs, in 
addition to immense turtles. The mammals of this period 
were semi-oviparous, or Marsupials, and while they were 
present in greater number, they were small in size.2° The 
birds of the Cretaceous period were provided with teeth 
like reptiles, while the fishes, which were abundant, were 
not greatly different from those of modern times. Mol- 
lusks, including the oyster, were abundant. 

With the passing of the Cretaceous period, the immense 
reptiles disappeared in a few thousand years; and, as 
is usual when a race is about to disappear, the Dinosaurs 
of the late Cretaceous period began to assume various 
fantastic shapes, due, no doubt, to the fact that they were 
striving to adapt themselves to changed or changing cli- 
matic, atmospheric and terrestrial conditions which would 
eventually prove fatal to their existence. 

In the Tertiary age numerous perfect specimens of in- 
vertebrates and insects have been found which are not 
greatly different from those of our own time. Sharks 


24 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 435. 
25 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 512. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 109 


from 50 to 70 feet in length swam the seas in the Ceno- 
zoic era, and in the Miocene period there were turtles 20 
feet long, 7 feet high and 8 feet wide. The huge Enalio- 
saurs, Dinosaurs, Mosasaurs and Pterosaurs were extinct, 
and in their places were crocodiles, lizards, turtles and 
snakes, the crocodiles reaching in this period their great- 
est state of perfection. 

In the late Tertiary, the reptilian birds disappeared and 
the connecting link also disappeared, so that the birds 
were very similar to those of our own time.?® In this 
same period are also found the first true placental mam- 
mals, not greatly specialized, but proherbivorous and pro- 
carnivorous. 

In the Miocene and Pliocene Period of Europe appeared 
for the first time the saber-toothed tiger and true monkeys 
(prophetic of man), also the rhinoceros, hippopotamus 
and elephant, and whales, now extinct, 70 feet in length. 

The first specimen of the horse family, about the size 
of a fox, is found in the lower Eocene; and in the upper 
Tertiary the brain of the horse gradually increased in 
size, and in every way the animal has advanced toward 
its present marvelous perfection. 

In the marshes and bogs and pot-holes of America 
many specimens of the elephant and the Mastodon have 
been found. 

In the Pleistocene (Fig. X, opp. p. 72) is found a 
mailed beast, the Chlomydotherium, which resembled a 
turtle and was as large as an ox or rhinoceros. 

At the beginning of the Quaternary age in North 
America we find the camel, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, 
tapir, mammoth and horse, all of them in considerable 
numbers, and at the same time, man of the old stone age 
was engaged in the struggle for existence with Nature 
and the beasts about him.?? 

The remains of great numbers of Quaternary mammals 


26 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, p. 540. 
27 Elements of Geology, Joseph LeConte, pp. 600-602. 


IIo GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


(Fig. X, opp. p. 72) have been found in various parts of 
Europe in bone caverns, caves, beaches and terraces, in 
marshes and frozen soils. The following are some of the 
animals found: elephants, rhinoceroses, the hippopotamus, 
the Irish elk, the horse and the ox, the cave bear, the 
hyena, the lion and the saber-toothed tiger. In one cave 
were found the remains of 300 hyenas, 800 cave bears, 
and in another cavern the remains of 100 cave bears. 
These bones were undoubtedly the accumulation of cen- 
turies, prehistoric man having eaten the flesh which once 
covered them. They are also an evidence of the powers 
and skill of prehistoric man, as most of them had been 
captured and killed in the chase. Twenty tons of hippo- 
potamus’ bones have been removed from one cave in 
Sicily, also the bones and implements of prehistoric men. 

The bones of 500 mammoths have been found on the 
coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, and 200 grinder teeth. The 
mammoth roamed in large herds all over Europe, and 
perfect specimens have been found, frozen in the ice of 
the far North. 


CHAPTER VIII 


Man is a cousin of the Anthropoid ape, many, many 
generations removed. When he ceased to be an Anthro- 
poid and became a man no one can tell, as no historian 
was there to record the event, and Nature, who is one 
with God, has not dated the record made, but leaves it for 
us to find out by searching. It is one of the dates which 
man will never find, for there was no definite moment of 
time when man ceased to be a beast and became a human 
soul. It was a gradual evolution. Our Anthropoid an- 
cestor found it wise to come down from the trees and 
live upon the ground. He found that he could stand 
upon his posterior legs and walk in the upright position, a 
thing which no other animal had ever systematically done; 
and he found that his anterior legs were better suited for 
many other purposes than they were for walking. He 
had much better use of his eyes when he was in the up- 
right position than formerly when he walked upon all 
four legs, giving him a valuable advantage in escaping 
from his enemies. As his posterior legs were used almost 
exclusively for locomotion, he developed a greatly in- 
creased speed in running, and a grace and ease in move- 
ment. As the centre of gravity was better supported, he 
could endure much more exertion with less fatigue. His 
anterior legs and feet gradually developed into hands and 
arms, as the result of the diversified uses to which they 
were more and more devoted. The “manual training,” in 
which these hands and arms were constantly employed, 
developed the brain, causing it both to increase in size and 
develop along special lines. Gradually, through many 
thousands of years, the beast disappeared, and a man was 
born, inheriting most of the beastly characteristics of his 


ancestors. 
111 


112 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


In his fierce struggle with Nature and the savage beasts 
about him, intellectual capacity was of more value to this 
primitive man than physical force; by which it came about 
that the man with the most intelligence was best able to 
defend himself from harm, and take to himself, as his 
female companions, the best specimens of the female sex. 
As the centuries went on, this constant “survival of the 
fittest” and this continued natural and sexual selection of 
the best specimens of each sex led to a constant improve- 
ment in both the mental and physical powers. 

It has been noticed, in both the animal and vegetable 
kingdoms, that occasionally a peculiar individual appears, 
differing widely from his forbears, his brothers and 
cousins, and these peculiarities are sometimes hereditary, 
so that a new breed of animals or a new variety of plants 
is developed. These new developments are sometimes 
called “sports.” It has been suggested, though perhaps 
never put forth as a scientific theory, that man might be 
a mutation or a variation from his humble ancestry, and, 
therefore, a “sport” rather than an orderly evolution 
from more primitive animals. 

The anatomical resemblances between Man and the 
Anthropoid apes are very close; they have the same num- 
ber of teeth of almost identical form and construction; 
the brain structure is essentially the same, as the gorilla 
differs less in point of brain structure from man than he 
does from lower orders of monkeys, like the lemur. 
“Thus, whatever system of organs be studied, the com- 
parison of their modifications in the ape series leads to 
one and the same result, that the structural differences 
which separate man from the gorilla and the chimpanzee 
are not so great as those which separate the gorilla from 
the lower apes.” ? 

A study of the skulls of animals, other than man, shows 
a great development of brain capacity, in many instances, 
since the Miocene period. The horse of the twentieth 

1 Man’s Place in Nature, Huxley, p. 144. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 113 


century is a much more intelligent beast than his an- 
cestors of the Pliocene period. 

The date when man became a man is buried so deep 
under the obscurities of antiquity that we can never find 
it, but the geological period which was honored by his 
advent is fairly certain, and we can feel reasonably sure 
that man, as differentiated from the beast, appeared in the 
Miocene period (Fig. X, opp. p. 72), 300,000 years ago. 
He had not yet attained to the intelligence or ingenuity 
of the men of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age (See Fig. 
Y, p. 114), but he had ceased to be a beast and was mov- 
ing toward that state of ideal perfection which we of the 
twentieth century are still striving after, but which is 
still far in the future. 

In times of war and famine with all its horrors, and 
in face of all the cruelties and injustices of our times, 
it is well for us to look to the rock from which we were 
hewn, and to behold the pit from which we were digged, 
and take courage. For man and his civilization are cer- 
tainly moving in the right direction. “Thoughtful men 
will find in the lowly stock whence man has sprung, the 
best evidence of the splendor of his capacities, and will 
discern, in his long progress through the past, a reason- 
able ground of faith in his attainment of a noble future.” ? 

The condition of this Pre-Pleistocene man is hard for 
us to imagine (Fig. Y, p. 114, and Fig. X, opp. p. 72). 
He was without the use of fire, perhaps without even a 
knowledge of its existence. He lived a life of constant 
terror, as he was liable at any moment to be devoured by 
the wild beasts about him, against which he had no 
weapons of defense except his naked fists, and no refuge 
from their ferocity except the treetops. He was in almost 
equal danger from the savages of his own species. To the 
victor belonged the body of the vanquished, and cannibal- 
ism was probably universal. Few, if any, of the human 
species reached old age. When a man was unable to de- 


2 Man’s Place in Nature, Huxley, p. 155. 


114 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


FIGURE *Y¥” 
IRON AGE 
BRONZE AGE 

PREHISTORIC 

NEOLITHIC 
AZILIAN TARDENOISIAN 
MAGDALENIAN UPPER PALAEOLITHIC 

(30,000 years ago (?) i+) 

SOLUTREAN 


AURIGNACIAN CRO MAGNON MAN 


MOUSTERIAN NEANDERTHAL MAN 


ACHEULEAN LOWER PALAEOLITHIC 
CHELLEAN 
PRE CHELLEAN PILTDOWN MAN 
HEIDELBERG MAN 
PLEISTOCENE 
or 
ICE AGE 


TRINIL MAN 
EOLITHIC 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 115 


fend himself or make himself useful to his associates, or 
unable to escape from their cannibalistic greed, he was 
sure to be devoured, either by his fellow-men or by the 
carnivora about him. This was particularly the fate of 
the women, especially the elderly women, for there was 
no mercy for the weak in those centuries. 

In those early times men lived entirely upon what they 
were able to capture in the chase, and this was eaten raw, 
blood and all, after being torn in pieces by the hands and 
teeth; it was often in a decomposed condition. Our 
earliest ancestor wore no clothing, and slept curled up 
upon the ground, without protection from the weather 
except in rare instances when he could find a cave not 
occupied by a lion, or a cave bear, or a saber-toothed tiger 
or savage men more powerful than himself. The struggle 
for food was at all times fierce, and starvation was not 
uncommon. The savage hunters of France were coeval 
with the woolly mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros. 
Chastity was a thing undreamed of in this savage breast, 
for all females were the property of the men who were 
strong enough to capture them and hold them against all 
comers. In our days we hang or electrocute men for do- 
ing the things which in Pre-Pleistocene days indicated a 
fitness to survive and propagate the race. 

The Quaternary or Pleistocene man was an anticipa- 
tion or prophetic type of the man of the Old Stone Age, 
who was to follow him. 

Perhaps about 125,000 years ago man had so far ad- 
vanced in intelligence that he began to use stones as imple- 
ments, and was learning to sharpen them and shape them 
for arrowheads, hatchets and hammers. At about the 
same time he commenced to use the bones and horns of 
the animals he had slain for implements, and for handles 
for the stone implements of his grandfathers. 

The men of the Old Stone Age 75,000 years ago learned 
the use of fire, as their hearths are found at the entrances 
of their caves and at many other places in Europe. 


I16 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


In caves in France and Spain, and other parts of 
Europe the bones of thousands of horses and hippopotami 
are found. In one cave in the south of France were 
found the bones of the cave bear, brown bear, badger, 
polecat, cave lion, wild cat, hyena, wolf, fox, mammoth, 
rhinoceros, horse, ass, boar, stag, irish-elk, roe, reindeer 
and auroch. Many of these bones had been split to obtain 
their marrow, and some of them had been pounded up in 
a stone mortar. Many of the implements of the Palzo- 
lithic and Neolithic culture are found in these caves among 
the bones. Human bones have often been found in these 
caves scattered among the bones of animals, indicating 
that there was no burial, but that the remains of can- 
nibalistic feasts were as unceremoniously disposed of as 
the remains of other feasts. Often these human bones 
had been split open to extract the marrow. 

Frequently these cave dwellers, if they made any at- 
tempt at a burial, buried one generation on top of an- 
other, as has sometimes been done by civilized people in 
quite recent times. 

It must be understood that civilization has never been 
equally advanced in all parts of the earth. When America 
was discovered most of the aborigines were in the Stone 
Age of culture, and there are still races which have ad- 
vanced little farther. When Western and Northern 
Europe were still in the Old Stone Age of culture, Egypt 
and Babylonia and Greece were far advanced in civiliza- 
tion. 

The chart on page 114, modified from Osborne, repre- 
sents the various stages of culture in Europe that pre- 
ceded historic times, and gives the names of the various 
races of men who have left their relics, and the evidences 
of their existence and culture behind them in almost all 
parts of Europe. 

The Piltdown man was perhaps as ancient as the 
Heidelberg or Trinil men, at any rate his remains are 
found in Pre-Chellean times, which date back 100,000, 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 117 


perhaps 300,000 years.2 The Old Stone Age alone 
probably covered a period in Europe of much more than 
100,000 years, followed by the long Neolithic period. 

During the residence of these races in Europe there was 
a severe Ice Age which must have driven them far to the 
south of France and Spain, and with them there evidently 
was a great migration of Arctic and sub-Arctic fauna, 
for we find mingled with the bones and implements and 
debris of these men the bones of the musk ox, the woolly 
mammoth, the reindeer and other animals whose habitat 
is in the cold regions of the far North. 

It has been claimed that the Neanderthal man entered 
Europe during the third interglacial stage and preceding 
the fourth glaciation; at any rate he was resident there 
during Mousterian times (See Fig. Y, p. 114), but what 
number should be attached to the different periods of 
glaciation is a matter open to argument. Surely the ice 
advanced well down across the continent of Europe and 
retreated to the far North more than four times prior to 
60,000 years ago.* 

During all Palzolithic times Europe was inhabited by 
animals from all climates and all parts of the earth, ex- 
cept America and Australia, and apes and monkeys lived 
in France and Germany.® 

In grottos at Le Moustier, St. Acheul, and at Castillo 
in Spain, and in England, the Neanderthal man has left 
abundant traces of his existence. He made a continuous 
residence there from Acheulean up to and through Aurig- 
nacian times.® 

In the grotto at Castillo in Spain debris to the depth 
of 45 feet has been explored. Prehistoric man from 
Acheulean to Azilian times (See Fig. Y, p. 114), cover- 


3 Men of the Old Stone Age, Henry F. Osborne, p. 145. 

4 Men of the Old Stone Age, Henry F. Osborne, pp. 42-43. 

5 Men of the Old Stone Age, Henry F. Osborne, pp. 98-100-101- 
213-243. 


me de of the Old Stone Age, Henry F. Osborne, pp. 200-201- 


118 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


ing a period of many thousand years, lived in this and 
similar grottos and caves, and contended with wild beasts 
for their possession. Beside him dwelt the woolly mam- 
moth, the woolly rhinoceros, wild horse, deer, bison, cave 
bear, badger, polecat, lion, wild cat, hyena, wolf, fox, ass, 
boar, stag, Irish-elk, reindeer, auroch, all of which he 
hunted, and upon the flesh of which he depended entirely 
for food; and upon their skins for clothing.? “The 
game was dismembered where it fell. The skull was split 
open for the brain and the long bones for marrow.” “It 
is a volume of pre-history, read and interpreted almost 
as clearly as if it were in writing.” 

In the sense in which we possess them, these savages 
had no names; polygamy, polyandry, infanticide and can- 
nibalism were universal. The old and feeble were either 
eaten by their own people or turned out to be eaten by 
the wild beasts in constant waiting for such a meal. While 
these savages possessed more intelligence than the beasts 
about them, they possessed none of the virtues of even 
the most remote civilization. 

About 25,000 years ago the Neanderthal man disap- 
peared, apparently exterminated by a better race, which 
was also much further advanced along the long road to 
civilization. This new man was the Cro Magnon of 
Magdalenian or possibly of Aurignacian times (See Fig. 
Y, p. 114). This Cro Magnon race undoubtedly came 
into Europe from the East, probably from the territory 
north and east of the Black Sea, and they perhaps brought 
with them the advanced culture which is apparent wher- 
ever evidences of their existence are found. 

They used the horns of deer to dig the flints out of the 
chalk beds, and out of these flints and stones, arrow-heads, 
hatchets, knives, axes, hammers, awls, daggers, chisels, 
scoops and sling-stones were made. 

7 Men of the Old Stone Age, Henry F. Osborne, pp. 200-201- 


202-213. 
8 Men of the Old Stone Age, Henry F. Osborne, p. 257. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 119 


The Cro-Magnon men were the dominant race in 
Western Europe through Neolithic times and there are 
abundant anatomical evidences that many of the peoples 
of Europe today are descended from these primitive men. 
“The distinctive features of the Neolithic epoch are: 
implements of polished stone, a rudimentary knowledge 
of agriculture, use of plants and seeds for food; imple- 
ments for the preparation of the soil and for harvesting 
the crops; introduction of pottery used in cooking; do- 
mestication of two breeds of cattle; sheep, goats, horses, 
pigs and dogs.” ® 

In the upper Palzolithic we find the first evidences of 
art. Rude images carved out of bones, or out of stone, 
and drawings of animals and men. These drawings 
possessed considerable merit. During Magdalenian times 
(See Fig. Y, p. 114) paintings in colors, which have en- 
dured to the present day and which evince considerable 
artistic skill, were made on the walls of caverns. At the 
same time there was great improvement in implements 
of all sorts, including bone needles and harpoons. 

About this time also men commenced to make what we 
might call decent interments of their dead. There are 
great numbers of stone tombs in many parts of western 
Europe, some of them of considerable extent, and indi- 
cating funeral rites of probably great ceremony. Burned 
human bones have been found in these tombs. Were the 
victims burned alive or was cremation practiced in these 
early times? Stonehenge in England is probably one of 
these large ceremonial tombs. 

Stone arrow-heads have been found in the skulls and 
vertebrze of men of the Neolithic age, indicating that they 
might have been slain in battle. The shell mounds of 
Denmark are probably of the Neolithic times (See Fig. 
Y, p. 114). In these mounds, sometimes 15 feet in 


9 Men of the Old Stone Age, Henry F. Osborne, pp. 498-499- 
387-391. 


120 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


height, are found bones of men, shells of oysters, and 
implements of various degrees of finish. 

In the lakes of Switzerland are found evidences of a 
higher culture than had developed elsewhere during 
Neolithic times. These industrious people built their 
dwellings upon piles driven into the lake bottom, a dis- 
tance of several feet, and protruding above the surface of 
the lake far enough to allow of the construction of quite 
comfortable domiciles. By accident, from time to time, 
they dropped into the lake, considerable variety of articles 
employed in their domestic economy which were aban- 
doned as lost. These have been preserved, covered by the 
water, through all the succeeding centuries; and furnish 
to us a very interesting record of their culture. They 
made rude pottery for cooking and various domestic pur- 
poses; they possessed quite a variety of stone tools very 
nicely finished, and in later ages some implements of 
bronze; they had learned to cultivate flax, wheat, barley 
and millet, and from the flax made nets for fishing and 
articles of clothing; they had domesticated cattle, sheep, 
goats and dogs, and apparently lived in a condition of 
considerable comfort and prosperity.?° 

We may judge something of the appearance and con- 
dition of the men of Palzolithic and Neolithic times (See 
Fig. Y, p. 114) by the descriptions given by Darwin and 
Sir John Lubbock of savages whom they had observed, 
who, while they had received perhaps something from con- 
tact with civilization, were still in the Upper Palzolithic 
stage of culture. While all the conditions which they 
describe were not found in every tribe or people whom 
they visited, still there were observed no great differences 
between them. They are described by Sir John Lubbock 
as more filthy than animals, covered with grease, their 
hair so filled with grease and dirt that it hardens like a 
cap. In many instances neither sex wore any clothing, 


10 History of the Early World, James Henry Breasted, pp. 21 
to 24, 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 121 


and their skins were tattooed or cut in deep and wide 
scars; often the face was disfigured by holes cut through 
the lips, in which they wore sticks and ornaments of horn 
or bone of considerable size. If any clothing at all was 
worn, it consisted of the skins of animals, extremely filthy 
and infested with vermin. 

The Paleolithic men cannot be said to have had any 
religion; though they were tormented by fear of evil 
spirits and all sorts of devils, which were supposed to 
haunt the forests and inhabit the dark recesses of ravines 
and caverns, and who must be propitiated by incantations 
and bloody rites and often by human sacrifices. Heaven, 
if they dreamed of such a place, was where they could 
fight and always be victorious over all their enemies, where 
they could possess an unlimited number of wives, and 
have an abundance of raw flesh and blood to eat. Their 
only code of morals was the whim or desires of the 
strong: the weak had no rights, except such as were al- 
lowed them by the strong: and this applies particularly to 
the females, who were virtual slaves. 

Polygamy was the rule and polyandry not uncommon. 
Among many tribes it was customary to swap or trade 
wives, and it was a matter of courtesy to lend or provide 
a temporary wife for a guest. It has been a custom 
among many savages to bury a wife or two and some 
slaves with the husband. Where some sort of a marriage 
contract existed it was often temporary, to be terminated 
at the pleasure of the man, or at the birth of a child. The 
women were frequently tied up and whipped, and not in- 
frequently eaten, particularly if they were getting old 
or were no longer useful; among some tribes they were 
buried alive. 

Cannibals ate the flesh of their victims, not only because 
they desired it for food, but because it was supposed that, 
by eating an enemy who had been vanquished, his courage 
and fierceness and strength would be acquired by the 
victor. The human victims were torn in pieces by the 


122 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


teeth and hands of the cannibals, and eaten uncooked, 
blood and all. Blubber and decomposed flesh were often 
considered a great delicacy. 

At the seacoast heaps of shells covering half an acre 
and 10 feet deep have been found. In addition to these 
shellfish, these savages ate roots and wild vegetables, 
fruits, frogs and snakes, honey and grubs, moths, birds, 
and bird’s eggs, fish, turtles, dogs, seals and whales. The 
bones were often pounded up by stone hammers to ex- 
tract the marrow. In later times, after cattle and goats 
were domesticated, milk was kept in bladders and sacks 
of skins, and meat was often boiled in blood and milk 
and considered a great delicacy. 

These savages of the Paleolithic times possessed a very 
limited vocabulary, probably could not count above five, 
and had no words for the finer sentiments. They probably 
had little or no idea of the measurement of time, and no 
idea of the ages of individuals. We may be prepared to 
believe Sir John Lubbock when he states that these people 
engaged in dances that were not “decorous.” 

The following observations of Mr. Charles Darwin will 
enable us to learn something more of the probable habits 
of our remote ancestors of the Lithic ages. ‘‘The inhabi- 
tants of Tierra del Fuego, living chiefly on shellfish, are 
obliged constantly to change their place of residence; but 
they return at intervals to the same spots, as is evident 
from the pile of old shells which must often amount to 
some tons in weight. * * * While going on shore we 
pulled alongside a canoe with six Fuegians. These were 
the most abject and miserable creatures that I anywhere 
beheld. * * * * These Fuegians in the canoe were quite 
naked, and even one full-grown woman was absolutely 
so. It was raining heavily at the time and the fresh 
water, together with the spray, trickled down her body. 
These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their 
hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins 
filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices dis- 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 123 


cordant. Viewing such men one can hardly believe they 
are fellow creatures and inhabitants of the same world. 
At night five or six human beings, naked, and scarcely 
protected from the wind and rain of this tempestuous 
climate, slept on the wet ground, coiled up like animals. 
Whenever it is low water, they must rise to pick shellfish 
from the rocks, and the women, winter and summer, 
either dive to collect sea-eggs or sit patiently in their 
canoes, and, with a baited hair line, jerk out small fish. 
If a seal is killed, or the floating carcass of a putrid whale 
discovered, there is a feast. Such miserable food is aug- 
mented by a few tasteless berries or fungi. Nor are they 
exempt from famine, and, as a consequence, cannibalism 
is accompanied by parricide.” 

Prehistoric races have been studied more carefully in 
northern and western Europe and in North America than 
elsewhere, because there were no ancient civilizations in 
this territory to cover up and destroy whatever evidences 
these primitive men may have left of their existence. 
Furthermore, northern and western Europe and North 
America alone can furnish the resident scholarship and 
scientific training necessary for this line of research. 

As we examine into the conditions of Prehistoric man 
over a period of many centuries, perhaps the thing which 
most forcibly impresses us is the constant improvement 
or evolutionary progress. This progress is slow, as are 
all the operations of the universe, and it can only be noted 
by a careful study of history and of pre-history, and the 
application of the principles of the philosophy of history, 
which is a comparatively new science, understood by few, 
and quite generally ignored by the earlier scholars. It 
seems apparent that progress, improvement, constant 
change to better things, until perfection is reached, is as 
much one of the laws of God as are Newton’s laws of 
gravitation. 

We see man slowly coming up from the beast. As was 
necessary, the physical man must be developed first, and 


124 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


it seems that the Cro-Magnon was perhaps physically the 
equal of the best specimens of our twentieth century. 
Certainly the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians were 
superb physical specimens. 

Closely following the physical development was the in- 
tellectual. But it seems to have been a long time before 
the moral and the spiritual were developed to such an ex- 
tent as to greatly influence his character and actions. The 
men of moral and spiritual insight, like Elijah, Amos, 
Isaiah and Jesus Christ, Paul, Socrates, Wycliff and 
Martin Luther, have been the exception, and few of the 
men of their own times have understood or appreciated 
them or been greatly influenced im their conduct by their 
teachings. These men, and others like them, were pro- 
phetic types, prophetic of the whole body of mankind in 
a distant future age, just as the Anthropoid ape was 
prophetic of the Neanderthal man, and the Cro-Magnon 
man prophetic of the classical Greek. 

The physical man is practically perfect; the mental is 
approaching a state of great proficiency, if not quite yet 
perfection; moral and spiritual ideas are just beginning 
to wield an influence, in some quarters, on politics and 
international affairs. And there is an increasing num- 
ber of men and women whose private lives are governed 
by principles of morality and justice. 

These principles of domestic morality are some of them 
found highly developed in animals. The fidelity and 
affection of the dog can hardly be exceeded, and the 
mother love of the cow is pathetic, as observed when her 
calf has been taken from her. “Is mother love vile be- 
cause a hen shares it, or fidelity base because dogs possess 
tT Mk 

These qualities can only be partially developed in the 
beast, as his intellectual capacity and breadth of vision are 
so limited. But man with his greatly enlarged and deeply 
convoluted cerebrum and his wide field for observation, 


11 Man’s Place in Nature, Huxley, p. 154. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 125 


which embraces not only the earth and all upon it, but 
the whole field of history and science, the literature of all 
the saints and sages of all countries and all centuries, will 
be able to fulfill the prophecy, not only of his humble 
worshiper, the dog, but of his ancestors and brothers who 
have these many centuries dreamed and prophesied of a 
new earth wherein shall dwell righteousness. 

As man has developed his civilization, he has, to a 
certain extent, negatived two of the fundamental laws of 
Nature: survival of the fittest and natural selection. He 
has had to make for himself new hygienic laws to super- 
sede those which Nature provided for his development. 
When man was simply an animal, he was more subject 
to the influences of climate, diet and environment, than 
when civilization supplied him with houses, clothing, and 
better and more abundant food. Under these latter con- 
ditions it was not always the fittest that survived. ‘The 
order of Nature is such that an increasing evolution of 
fitness is possible, and there is adaptation in cosmic evolu- 
tion:!)44 


12 The Bible of Nature, G. J. Arthur Thompson, p. 26. 


CHAPTER IX 


Many pages of the Book which God is writing are con- 
tained in the history of the human race after it emerged 
from savagery and slowly picked its way through ig- 
norance, superstition, religious prejudice and intolerance, 
inexperience, despotisms of opinion and government, pov- 
erty, injustice, wars, pestilence and famine. Through all 
these experiences the race has passed, and many peoples 
are still lost and wandering among them all, and must 
struggle yet for centuries before they can emerge from 
this forest of evils. 

A brief glance at advancing civilizations will show us 
how the law of evolution is working through the history 
of our race. 

In the dawn of history, while it was still largely mytho- 
logical, we learn that many primitive people worshiped 
the sun or the moon, or both. The Mikado of Japan, we 
are told, is descended from the sun, and perhaps some of 
his loving subjects still believe it. In Babylonia the old 
sun god Shamash was a great god, and as early as 2000 
B. C. the Babylonians’ supreme god was called Murduk, 
who was the sun god, and corresponded to Jupiter of the 
later Romans. Amenhotep IV of Egypt, 1400 B. C., 
elevated the sun god to the supreme place, as the only 
one god, and thus we find monotheism established by law 
in what is probably the oldest civilization on earth. 

The sun and the moon have been considered sometimes 
as male and sometimes as female by their ignorant and 
superstitious worshipers. The sun was always the great 
timepiece for the world, but it must have taken primitive 
man a long time to grasp and understand the 365 days 
of the solar year. 

We find in Egypt a very early and advanced civilization. 

126 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 127 


In what was for them the late Stone Age, we find them 
raising barley and split wheat, and employing irrigation. 
The Egyptians discovered copper in the wilderness of 
Sinai about 4000 B. C. and learned something of its use. 

The primitive mind on all continents and in every cen- 
tury seems to have been able to grasp. and understand only 
the despotic or monarchical form of government. We 
find this form of government well developed on a fairly 
scientific basis in Egypt in 4000 B. C. The Egyptians 
had an alphabet of 24 letters more than 3,000 years before 
Christ, and phonetic writing was first developed and prac- 
ticed by the Egyptians, before which time picture writing 
had been advanced almost to an exact science.? 

The yearly calendar of 365 days, divided into 12 
months, devised by the Egyptians in 4241 B. C,, is still 
used by us. The Egyptians were the first to number the 
years, after having previously named them from some 
conspicuous event which occurred in each. 

Specimens of pottery of great beauty are still preserved, 
which were made in 3000 B. C. Between 3000 B. C. 
and 2500 B. C. the great pyramids were built, Gizeh be- 
ing completed about 2900 B. C.; and at this remote date 
the Egyptians maintained large fleets of seagoing vessels, 
propelled both by oars and sails, which circled the 
Mediterranean. 

Not until 2000 B. C., however, did they build a canal 
from the Nile to the Red Sea, after which for many cen- 
turies their ships passed from the Mediterranean to the 
Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and carried on an im- 
mense commerce with the far East. This canal, after 
centuries of use, became filled up, and was abandoned un- 
til Darius, about 600 B. C., opened it up again and 
restored its commerce. A large commerce by caravan was 
carried on with the interior of Africa and Arabia and 
western Asia. 


ee History of the Early World, James Henry Breasted, pp. 
44 History of the Early World, James Henry Breasted, p. 126. 


128 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


Taxes in early times were collected in produce and 
cattle, so that the King had immense storehouses and large 
tracts of land for his cattle, which by 2900 B. C. were 
much like the cattle of the present day. As early as 2800 
B. C. copper drain pipes for draining houses were in use, 
and copper was extensively used in the manufacture of 
carpenters’ and builders’ tools.2 By 2900 B. C. rings of 
copper and gold of standard weight were employed as 
money. 

Decorative art had reached a high state of perfection 
by 2900 B. C.; beautiful tapestry was produced, and some 
pieces of furniture have been preserved which would be a 
credit to the best manufacturers of art furniture of the 
twentieth century. These articles were not only artistic 
in design and form, but were inlaid with gold and silver, 
ivory and ebony and other ornamental woods with a skill 
that could not easily be excelled. 

The huge sculpture, the pyramids, the sphinx, the great 
temples of Egypt have been the wonder of 50 centuries, 
and probably will be wonders for as many centuries to 
come. 

The immortality of the soul was a doctrine believed 
in 2500 B. C., as is clearly indicated by inscrip- 
tions and numerous articles found in ancient Egyptian 
tombs. A belief in a judgment day, with Osiris as the 
judge, was also a tenet of orthodoxy 4,500 years ago. 
Written records were kept on rolls of papyrus, which 
were preserved in glass jars, and on one of these rolls a 
noble records his good deeds and kindly acts towards 
widows and orphans, virgins, and the poor, in a manner 
to indicate that he at least appreciated many of the vir- 
tues, and endeavored to practice some of them. 

The decimal system of numbers was in use, and simple 
astronomical instruments were used much as today. 

Horses and chariots were introduced into Egypt from 
Asia some time prior to 1600 B. C.; and by this time 


2A History of the Early World, James Henry Breasted, p. 62. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 129 


Egypt was the ruler of Asia Minor, and, to some extent, 
of Greece. These historical facts relating to Egypt have 
been gleaned from A History of the Early World by 
James Henry Breasted. 

A short study of the history of other eastern countries 
will help us realize how universal is the application of the 
law of evolution in the history of the human race. 

Before 3000 B. C. a Sumerian civilization was flourish- 
ing on the plain of Shinar. Mud bricks were used for 
making houses; cattle had been domesticated, and oxen 
were used to draw two-wheeled carts. No domesticated 
horses were used at this early date. Barley and split wheat 
were raised. Picture and cuneiform writing had been 
perfected. The years were still named, not numbered. 
Their unit for numbers of considerable size was 60, from 
which we derive our 360° of the great circle, and our 60 
seconds in the minute and 60 minutes in the hour.’ 

This Sumerian civilization had a myth to explain the 
presence of death and suffering in the earth, which re- 
minds us of the old Hebrew myth of Adam and Eve, 
which has been perpetuated by the modern church and 1s 
still believed by some good, though simple, people. Their 
myth was that the South-wind goddess overturned the 
boat of the fisherman Adapa (the same as Adam?). He 
flew into a rage and broke her wings, for which he was 
summoned into the presence of the Sky-god, and was 
offered the bread and water of life, which would have 
made him and the whole human race immortal; but this 
he refused; hence, death and condemnation came upon 
the whole human race.* 

As early as 2100 B. C. written codes of laws were in 
existence in Babylonia, and instructions from a governor 
to his lieutenants have been found on clay tablets, bear- 
ing this early date. 

Gold and silver were in use in Babylon as early as 


3.4 History of the Early World, James Henry Breasted, p. 112. 
44 History of the Early World, James Henry Breasted, p. 126. 


130 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


2100 B. C., but probably not made into coins until the 
time of Darius about 600 B. C. 

The Indo-Europeans probably brought the domesticated 
horse into western Asia about 2500 B. C., but he does 
not appear to have been used in Babylonia until 2100 B. 
C., and not in Egypt until 400 years later. 

Regular schools for boys and girls were in operation 
in, 2100) BGs 

A great library of 22,000 clay tablets had been accumu- 
lated in Nineveh by 7oo B. C. 

Iron, which had been discovered in the country of the 
Hittites, and which had come into common use by I100 
B. C., was first made into weapons of war and used by 
the Assyrian Army. 

Horses, cattle and sheep were in use by the Medo-Per- 
Sians,2500)1CP 

For many centuries nomadic tribes made frequent or 
occasional raids upon the more settled communities, either 
urban or agricultural, for purposes of plunder, or to 
secure more favorable or comfortable residences for them- 
selves. The migration of the Hebrews from Egypt to 
Palestine about 1250 B. C. may be considered as one of 
these nomadic raids. At approximately the same time the 
Philistines were driven out of the Island of Crete by the 
invading Greeks, and settled in southern Palestine, to be 
a thorn in the flesh of Israel for hundreds of years. 

The Hebrew blood was by no means kept pure, for fre- 
quent marriage alliances were made with surrounding 
tribes, especially the Hittites, until the Hittite type of 
head and face was firmly fixed upon the Hebrew, and 
remains one of his inheritances until the present day. 

The first historical writings of the Hebrews date from 
about 850 B. C. Amos uttered his terrible prophetic 
warnings about 750 B. C., and was followed some 50 
years later by Isaiah, the greatest of the literary men of 
the ancient Hebrews. The books of the Old Testament 


_ 8A History of the Early World, James Henry Breasted, p. 174. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 131 


were collected and edited by pious Jews after the return 
from the Babylonian captivity, and under the patronage 
of and by the express order of Cyrus. 

For a very complete and concise summary of the history 
of Israel and Babylonia see History of the Early World 
by Breasted. 

In the history of Greece and its people we can trace 
the progress of one people, living in one place, from the 
Bronze or Iron Ages to the present day; and can find in 
that one country every phase of barbarism and civilization, 
and every form of art and expression of culture that the 
human mind has so far developed. In the fields of art 
and literature it is safe to say that the Greeks have never 
been excelled, perhaps never equalled. For many cen- 
turies all the civilization worth mentioning was Greek, 
though much of it was not in Greece. Wherever the 
Greek, even the Greek slave, went, Grecian art and litera- 
ture and culture and thought went with him, and domi- 
nated these fields in his new home. Even imperial Rome 
at its best would hardly have risen above barbarism had 
it not been for Greek thought and culture. We of today 
owe so much to these old Greeks that no man can estimate 
the debt, and future ages, for all time, will look back to 
Greece as the mother of much that has made life worth 
living. 

Between 2000 and 1000 B. C. the Greeks had con- 
quered and possessed all of Greece and the shores of Asia 
Minor; coming, as a nomadic tribe, from the shores of 
the Caspian, or the country north and east of the Black 
Sea. The Dorian Greeks entered the Peloponnesus about 
1500 B. C. and conquered the Achzans and Aegeans, 
Greek tribes which had preceded them. About 1200 B. C. 
they drove the Philistines out of Crete, and completely 
possessed the territory of this warlike tribe. The Greece 
described by Homer may be dated at about 1200 B. C. 
Before 1000 B. C. iron had come into quite common use 
in Greece for all sorts of domestic purposes, as well as 


132 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


for weapons of war. By this time also the Greeks were 
engaged in quite an extensive commerce in the eastern 
Mediterranean. About 1100 B. C. the Phcenicians were 
importing large amounts of papyrus from Egypt, and had 
invented and introduced into Greece an alphabet of 22 
letters. By 650 B. C. reading and writing were common 
accomplishments among all classes in Greece.6 In 500 
B. C. Greek art had attained its highest state of perfection, 
and Greek commerce reached all points in the Mediter- 
ranean and extended even beyond the pillars of Hercules. 
Gold and silver coins were in general use. The population 
of both Athens and Corinth at this time was about 25,000 
in each city.’ 

It should be noted that before the introduction of writ- 
ing a “rememberer” was appointed in many Greek com- 
munities, whose duty it was to remember treaties and 
various transactions and events of importance. 

It has been said by some wise man that the Greeks were 
children. They exhibited all the vacillation, disloyalty, 
brutality, immorality, cunning and superstition of half- 
grown boys with brilliant intellects, but no family train- 
ing to impress upon them the value of domestic and public 
virtues. Like half-grown boys at play, they were con- 
tinually quarreling among themselves, and often refused 
to follow the wisest leaders, or to adopt and follow a wise, 
conservative and consistent public policy. 

All the weaknesses of a democracy were displayed by 
the Greek states, and only a few of the blessings and ad- 
vantages of a government by the people were realized. 
This was partly because they had no models or examples 
to follow, for, up to this time, outside of the family, 
patriarchal or tribal governments, only military despotisms 
had been successful. Then, too, the private and public 
virtues, which are so absolutely essential to the stability 
of a republic, were not possessed by a large proportion of 


6 A History of the Early World, James Henry Breasted, p. 271. 
7A History of the Early World, James Henry Breasted, p. 301. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 133 


the people, and their value was not known. The form 
of democracy was exceedingly crude, not adapted to a 
highly emotional and largely ignorant populace. But they 
were trying the experiment of self-government, and their 
mistakes and successes have been, and will be, of the 
greatest value to the world. Many of their mistakes the 
Greeks were able to correct as the years went by. The 
great Athenian poet-statesman, Solon, gave a new consti- 
tution, greatly improved the condition of the poor, and 
made a more equitable distribution of the land, firmly 
establishing the principle of trial by jury. 

By the year 500 B. C. Athens was practically a de- 
mocracy. The principles of toleration of political oppo- 
nents had not yet been reached in the evolution of civil 
government in Athens, and as a result she often either 
ostracised or executed her wisest and best citizens. This 
ostracism was not permanent banishment, for the period 
of enforced absence from Athens never exceeded I0 years, 
and was later reduced to 5 years, and it was not considered 
even an unmitigated disgrace. It was simply a temporary 
retirement of a popular leader in order that those who 
were not in favor of his methods or ideas might carry out 
their program without his opposition. It was something 
similar to what occurs in England, France or the United 
States when a political leader is defeated at an election, 
and is temporarily out of office. Property rights, civil 
rights, or honors were not affected by ostracism. Under 
the influence and leadership of Alcibiades this custom was 
abolished. 

If the theories of government, or a military expedition, 
had not worked out to the satisfaction of a majority of 
ignorant Athenians, the citizen held responsible for the 
failure was often driven from the city, and, not infre- 
quently, he joined himself to the enemies of Athens or 
of all Greece, and gave to these enemies the best services 
he was able to render. 

In the fifth century the music of the flute and the lyre 


134 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


might often have been heard in the houses of cultivated 
Athenians, and singing was looked upon as a most desir- 
able accomplishment. The lyric poets Sappho and Pindar 
were in great favor, and their songs were often heard in 
the public gatherings of the city. 

By the year 450 B. C. there were six thousand men in 
Athens who served as jurors and who were regularly paid 
out of the public funds. These jurors were practically 
the lawmakers of Athens as well as its courts, and con- 
stituted a powerful class of political parasites who did 
little to benefit the state. In many instances the higher 
officers of the state were chosen by lot, which certainly 
did not place the best men in the important positions of 
the government. The commanders of the army were quite 
generally elected. 

In the age of Pericles the population of Athens had 
perhaps reached 100,000, and it may have been three times 
that number. The annual revenue was about $750,000, 
and the Athenian statesmen had already appreciated the 
value and convenience of an export and import duty, 
which was levied at 1%. Nothing more beautiful in 
sculpture or architecture has ever been produced than was 
to be found in Athens during the ascendency of Pericles, 
and much of it was produced as the result of his patron- 
age and authority. He used the treasures of the league at 
Delos, and taxed the island cities and the colonies to build 
these wonderful buildings and monuments in Athens. He 
did not hesitate to collect taxes by force, if necessary. 
Pericles seems to have been not only a man of transcend- 
ent abilities, but possessed of many lovable qualities. He 
seems to have had a genuine affection for his “unmarried” 
wife, Aspasia, who was a very brilliant woman, and for 
his children. He required the attendance at the courts in 
Athens of those living at a great distance, if they wished 
to carry on their causes at law; this resulted in a great in- 
justice to many people. 

The sanitary arrangements in Athens were very crude; 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 135 


the streets were narrow and dirty, the repositories of 
every form of filth; there was no street cleaning and no 
drainage, and no water supply except from springs, which 
must often have become seriously contaminated. We have 
reason to believe that the morals of the city were as un- 
savory as the streets and springs. The private houses, 
which were mostly low and made of brick, could not have 
been very comfortable dwellings. 

Athens was the home of philosophers and thinkers of 
every type; of poets, orators, dramatists and historians, and 
by these men were discussed all the great problems which 
have perplexed the human soul since man emerged from 
the darkness of the Paleolithic ages. Thought was free; 
there was no inquisition to examine into the orthodoxy 
of the opinions of philosophers, and every subject was 
discussed with absolute freedom. Socrates was given 
the fatal cup, not so much on account of his philosophical 
opinions, as because he had been the gadfly tormenting 
the conceited leaders, showing up their ignorance and 
general incompetence. 

Human sacrifices had been discontinued in the early 
history of the Greeks, and in the times of Pericles and 
Socrates cruelty and torture were not practiced. Even 
the slaves were kindly treated, often emancipated, and 
many of them were highly educated. 

There were certain standards of orthodoxy from which 
it was not thought wise to dissent openly, but where there 
was such widespread intelligence, such amazing power of 
thought and such broad discussion, there was sure to be 
developed a “new theology” much as we have seen in 
modern times. In the fifth century B. C. the sophists 
taught that there was no evidence of the existence of any 
Greek gods; and Euripides, the agnostic dramatist, not 
only cast doubts upon the infallibility of the gods, but 
upon some of the theories of life that had been currently 
accepted in the philosophies of Greece. On the other 
hand, Sophocles and other dramatists and poets clung 


136 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


to the old theology and the old gods as “good enough” for 
them. 

Socrates was a profoundly religious man, but not in the 
modern sense; neither did he believe in all the gods of the 
Greeks. On one occasion, as described by his disciple 
Plato, he remarked that the popular belief was good 
enough for him, and, in the next sentence, stated that 
he did not subscribe to it. 

The teachings of Socrates embodied the highest stand- 
ards ever reached by pagan philosophers. He advocated 
the practice of all the virtues, as he understood them. 
His understanding of them was not identical with the 
teachings of Paul, but did not greatly differ: temperance, 
continence, chastity, truth, kindness to all, forgiveness of 
enemies, obedience to law, courage, and a willingness to 
fight to the death for what was right; a desire to plant 
the truth, and a love of virtue in the hearts and minds of 
others, at no matter how great cost to himself; love of his 
wife and children, were some of the virtues which he 
commended and practiced. He accepted no payment for 
his teaching; he had no greed for money; he loved his 
country and his city, and would not leave it to save his 
life. 

Plato was the great idealist of Grecian philosophy, who 
dreamed of a great republic, and had visions of the good 
time coming which is yet far off. Thucydides was the 
first to discover a philosophy in history, and to understand 
that events occurred as the natural sequence of preceding 
events and not by accident. Prior to 400 B. C. there were 
in existence in Athens banks, not unlike those of our 
day, which took deposits and loaned money at interest on 
suitable securities. 

All these great and wise Greeks were prophetic types 
of the men of a civilization which is just dawning after 
more than 2,000 years of waiting and groaning, travail 
and hope. They visualized only a part of civilization; 
they saw through a glass darkly, and could not even dream 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 137 


of much that is commonplace in the civilization of the 
twentieth century. 

The old Greeks could not develop a national unity and 
could not subordinate personal interests for the general 
good, and so, as a governing people, they could not rule 
a growing world. 

The Olympic games were held at Olympia, a beautiful 
valley in Elis, once in 5 years, in honor of Zeus, the father 
of all the gods. All internal strifes or wars between the 
different Grecian states were suspended during the games, 
and all Greece assembled to witness them. There was no 
brutality about these contests; they were simply tests of 
skill and strength entered upon after 10 months of in- 
tensive training. There were races for boys, and foot 
races for men. Some of these were simply short dashes, 
and some of them were miles in length, and were great 
tests of endurance. Then there were races in heavy 
armor, especially designed to train men for military 
service. There were contests in jumping, leaping, vault- 
ing, throwing the spear. Horse races and chariot races 
were a prominent feature of these games, all of which 
were designed to develop strength and skill, and to pro- 
mote beauty in the human form. The victors were 
crowned with garlands, cut from a sacred tree, and were 
accorded great honors, both at Olympia and upon their 
return to their own cities. After the games were over, 
at least one day was devoted to sacrifices to the gods, to 
libations, processions and banquets. Only one woman, a 
priestess, was allowed to witness these games, or partici- 
pate in the festivities which followed them. We, perhaps, 
can easily guess the reason why. 

Other countries had developed learning to a consider- 
able extent prior to 400 B. C., but Greece alone had de- 
veloped culture. Her artists, sculptors, architects, poets, 
orators, dramatists and philosophers will probably never 
be excelled, and will remain the models for all future 
generations. But a democracy which was able perma- 


138 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


nently to stand alone could not be developed until the 
nineteenth century A. D., and in a distant and unknown 
hemisphere. The evolution of the human mind and soul 
had simply not yet reached that stage where a successful 
democracy was possible. 

Philip of Macedonia, and his greater son, Alexander, 
were to give Grecian learning and culture that wide dis- 
semination which could only be attained in that age of the 
world by the assistance of a powerful and widely flung 
despotism. By 323 B. C. Alexander had extended his 
empire into Asia beyond the Indus, was master of Egypt, 
and had founded the city of Alexandria, which was soon 
to become a great centre of Grecian intellectual achieve- 
ments. Alexander of Macedon would not be called “The 
Great” today; he was a great beast, a great egotist, and 
probably a great general, but sublime selfishness was his 
greatest characteristic. 

The Hellenic age, covering a period of about 300 years 
from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B. C., saw 
a development at Alexandria of Grecian literature, art and 
science which far surpassed anything which had preceded 
it. Aristarchus of Samos discovered and taught that the 
earth and the planets revolve about the sun. Erastos- 
thenes measured the size of the earth with great accuracy. 
Water clocks were in use for telling time. In Alexan- 
dria was a museum for the study of anatomy, as well as 
a library which contained, in written and accessible form, 
all the wisdom of the world. The first Greek grammar 
was written by Dionysius in 120 B. C. 

The three great philosophers of Athens were Aristotle, 
Zeno and Epicurus, whose teachings on the conduct of 
life and its duties and pleasures have probably had more 
influence in shaping the lives of thinking men than any 
others except the precepts of the Christian church. Aris- 
totle dominated the thought and teaching of intellectual 
Europe almost down to our own day. 

In Grecian culture, abstract intellectuality reached per- 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 139 


haps its highest attainable level; it may be that the world 
will see nothing finer, but the practical application of this 
intellectual development to the affairs of everyday life, 
to the comforts and refinements of living for the great 
masses, to the development of mechanics and chemistry 
and agriculture, and above all, to the development of a 
civil government by the people, which should guarantee 
life and liberty and equal opportunity to all, was com- 
pelled to wait yet many centuries. The human mind, ex- 
cept for a few cultivated Greeks, was still bound by au- 
thority and needed a master, and people could understand 
no form of government but a despotism; but the despot- 
isms were growing more tolerant. Alexander ruled his 
world better than any of the despots who preceded him; 
and the great Roman Empire, which was soon to follow, 
was probably even more tolerant. God’s great law of 
evolution has never ceased to operate, not even for a 
moment. After the physical man had reached a point 
where his physical organization was nearly perfect, it took 
thousands of years for the mental or intellectual man to 
attain to the heights of the Greeks of Socrates’ day, and 
with this mental evolution there were prophetic signs of 
the moral growth which was to be the next step in man’s 
long journey from the Stone Age to the Heaven upon 
earth which is sure to come as the centuries roll by. His- 
tory teaches us that everything cannot be done at once. 
One people develops some particular phase of civilization, 
while it may be greatly lacking in most of the other 
elements which go to make up a civilized state. 

As Greece had stood for culture, so Rome, a little later, 
stood for power and an organized government, which, for 
efficiency and justice had not, up to that time, been equaled. 
While the Romans were brutes, they succeeded in dis- 
guising their despotic power and brutality with a thin 
veneer of Grecian culture until a very good imitation re- 
sulted. The moderns have inherited from Rome much 
in the way of law and order, discipline and organization; 


140 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


but the Grecian veneering of Rome was not so thick but 
that the beastliness and rottenness and brutality showed 
through, and streaked and stained, if it did not actually 
destroy, the Grecian mantle she had assumed. 

By 241 B. C. Andronicus, a Greek slave in Rome, had 
translated the Odyssey. and the Greek tragedies and 
comedies into Latin, and by 200 B. C. the Greek system 
of banking and brokerage was in general and extensive 
use in Rome. 

Slavery was always a Roman institution, and the city 
of Rome ever furnished a ready market for slaves from 
all parts of the world. It was a profitable business for 
pirates to steal free men on all the coasts of the Mediter- 
ranean and sell them in Rome for slaves. It was further 
the general practice to sell into slavery all captives taken 
in war, and at one time 150,000 slaves were taken from 
the Dalmatian coast. These slaves were generally treated 
with great harshness, though it was quite the fashion for 
wealthy Romans to keep educated Greek slaves, some of 
whom, like Epictetus and Andronicus, were men of so 
high an order of culture that they have won a permanent 
place among the immortals. 

The gladiatorial contests and the fights with wild beasts, 
which were such a joy to the Roman heart, had none of 
the refinements of the Grecian games, and did not de- 
velop the minds and bodies of the Romans as all the 
Greek contests had done for the Greeks. They simply 
developed brutality and checked the progress of civiliza- 
tion in Europe for centuries. There was not enough man- 
ly virtue in Rome to hold the empire together, and so it 
fell in pieces of its own weight. The barbarians of the 
north would have been powerless to enter Rome if the 
Roman citizen had added courage and virtue to his in- 
telligence. 

The time had arrived, in the evolution of the individual 
and of the state, when the private, domestic and public 
or civic virtues were of the first importance, both to the 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK I4I 


individual and the state. But few of the Greeks and 
fewer of the Romans understood this, with the result that 
after the Roman Empire came the deluge. All of Europe 
was in a turmoil for centuries. 


CHAPTER X 


We observe a close analogy between the geologic history 
of the earth and the history of vegetation; and between 
the history of the animal kingdom and the development of 
man; and later, between the development of civil govern- 
ment, and a moral and spiritual consciousness. 

The same laws of evolution control in each of these 
departments. First the Plutonic rocks were formed by 
the cooling surface of the molten mass of which our earth 
was made; these rocks were rent by volcanoes, heaved 
and twisted by the volcanic forces beneath them, and 
disintegrated by chemical action. The disintegrated par- 
ticles were deposited in the bottoms of the oceans to the 
thickness of many thousands of feet, and these sedimen- 
tary rocks were in turn thrown up thousands of feet by 
the internal pressure, often covered by volcanic lava, and 
turned over in every conceivable shape. The sedimentary 
and lava rocks were in turn disintegrated by chemical 
agents and the solvent action of water, and were washed 
down into the seas and converted into sedimentary rocks 
again. 

Thousands of feet of rock were scraped by ice until 
there was little left, and soils, composed of ground-up 
rock and vegetable and animal products, were deposited 
upon them. All this was perhaps immersed in the sea for 
millions of years and covered with the debris of aquatic 
life to the depth of thousands of feet, after which it 
emerged from the ocean, to be once more subjected to 
the processes briefly described above. 

In this way was the surface of the earth fitted for the 
development of vegetable and animal life. In the animal 
kingdom lower forms were ever being displaced by those 
which were higher and better, more complicated and 

142 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 143 


possessed of greater mentality. Ponderous beasts, whose 
fossil skulls indicate that little brains were encased by 
them, wandered over the earth with apparently no func- 
tion to perform except to devour immense quantities of 
vegetation. Thousands of species of these uncouth and 
cumbrous beasts perished to make room for the next 
higher species, until at last man emerged from his simian 
ancestry. The prehistoric man has perished, making room 
for the man of historic times, and this latter man has im- 
proved immensely since the dawn of history. 

We note the same evolution in civil government and 
ethical culture, and observe that the earlier and cruder 
forms of culture have been replaced. The civilizations of 
the Egyptians, the Medes and Persians, Babylonians and 
Hittites and others prepared the way for Greece to de- 
velop a crude and unworkable republic, which was a 
prophetic type of what has since reached greater perfec- 
tion in Great Britain and France and America. 

Rome developed law and order and centralized execu- 
tive power, and veneered her civilization with Greek 
culture until it seemed as though her empire was to be not 
only universal and eternal, but the center and source of 
learning for all times. But this Romanized Greek civili- 
zation was not the kind upon which could be built the ideas 
and institutions of the twentieth century. It had to be 
ground up and disintegrated, as were the rocks of the 
early world, and perish as had the earlier civilizations. It 
had to be sifted and stratified, and while it contained the 
materials out of which modern civilization were to be 
made, these materials must be tested by fire and the vol- 
canic action of wars and insurrections, persecutions and 
tortures, blood and horrors beyond description. 

The savage Germanic tribes of the north were the 
instruments which God employed to initiate this metamor- 
phosis. Ever since before the days of Cesar’s wars in 
Gaul these German tribes had been pressing hard against 
the frontiers of Roman dominion, and while they had been 


144 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


kept at bay they had never been conquered by Rome. 
Cesar himself had retired rather precipitately from an en- 
counter with the Germans which he called a victory, and 
which he naively states he had carried far enough to vindi- 
cate the honor of the Roman name. The Roman Empire 
was scores of years in_falling, but perhaps we may put 
the date of its end at A. D. 476, which date may mark 
the commencement of the middle ages or, as often called, 
the dark ages. These ages were dark because the light 
of civilization almost flickered out, and where there is 
little light there can be little progress. 

The German pagans of the north had no literature and 
no art, no theory of government except force and plunder. 
The beautiful specimens of Grecian art had no merit in 
the eyes of the barbarians, and statues and carvings and 
decorations of priceless value were ruthlessly destroyed 
and thrown into heaps of rubbish. That Grecian archi- 
tecture which Rome had copied and changed, and whose 
majesty and beauty will be the admiration of all time, 
possessed no more value in the eyes of these pagans than 
a mud hut on the Rhine or a cave in the rocks of Bavaria. 
Beautiful buildings were torn down, often for no reason, 
and the materials of which they were made left unused 
upon the ground to be buried beneath the accumulating 
debris of ages, or used for the construction of roads or 
other buildings. 

As these men from the north could neither read nor 
write, they possessed no literature of their own, and 
looked with contempt upon the literary men of Rome, 
considering as useless rubbish the parchments which con- 
tained the literary gems of the ages. We know that much 
of the ancient literature was lost, but how much and what 
was its value no one can tell. Much was preserved in the 
monasteries and in the obscure retreats of recluses; but 
for about 1,000 years there were few people who could 
read these manuscripts, and many of the monks who could 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 145 


read them and who copied them knew nothing of their 
meaning and little of their value. 

For 600 or 700 years the Latin language was little 
known, even by the priests; and quite frequently the 
priest who read the services of the church did not know 
their meanings. A knowledge of the Greek language had 
practically disappeared in the west, so that all the literary 
treasures of centuries were literally buried for more than 
1,000 years. 


CHAPTER AL 


The church was as corrupt as ignorance and bestiality 
and sin could make it. “Various religions from Asia and 
Egypt were popular in Rome during the first century 
A. D1 “All these faiths had their ‘mysteries,’ consisting 
of dramatic presentations of the career of the god, 
especially his submission to death, his triumph over it, and 
advent into everlasting life. It was believed that to 
witness these things and to undergo certain ceremonies 
of initiation would bring to those initiated deliverance 
from evil, the power to share in the endless life of the 
god, and to dwell with him forever.” 

Multitudes were attracted by the comforting assurances 
of these oriental faiths, and the blessed future insured by 
their mysteries. Prominent among them, and the only 
one that long survived, was that off-shoot of Judaism 
which has developed into the modern Christian church. 

The Alexandrian Greeks under Ptolemy I developed a 
trinity, with Osiris as the father, Isis the mother, and 
Horus the son, who was equal to the father, and grew up 
to assume his father’s name Osiris, and take his place 
asa god. The collective name of this trinity was Serapis. 
Serapis was spoken of as “the savior and leader of souls, 
leading souls to the light and rescuing them again. He 
raises the dead, he shows forth the longed-for light to 
those who see.” ? “We can never escape him, he will save 
us, after death we shall still be the care of his provi- 
dence.” § 

Isis, the mother goddess, “attracted many devotees who 


14 History of the Early World, James Henry Breasted, p. 66. 
2 Outline of History, H. G. Wells. Vol. I, pp. 413 and 414. 


3 Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, Legge, quoted by 
H. G. Wells in Outline of eae Vol. I, p. 413. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 147 


vowed their lives to her. Her images stood in the temples, 
crowned as the queen of Heaven and bearing the infant 
Horus in her arms; candles were burned before her. The 
novice was put through a long and careful preparation ; 
he took vows of celibacy, and when he was initiated, his 
head was shaved and he was clad in a linen garment.” 

Up to the Christian era, and after, the only form of 
civil government that had been long successful and able 
to maintain its authority over a wide area was an un- 
limited despotism, and early in the history of the mother 
church, the “fathers” evolved a system of ecclesiastical 
and spiritual despotism, which, with the theology of her 
various reformed “daughters,” has been the cause of 
more physical and mental anguish than all the wars of 
the last 2,000 years. 

It has seemed to be a part of the divine plan that the 
human soul and mind must be held in bondage and fear, 
deprived of all its rights, passing days and nights in 
terror, spending years in mental anguish, not only for its 
own supposed sins, but for the sins of a far-off ancestor. 
Men were terrorized by an account of an everlasting tor- 
ment and a burning pit, of the lake which burneth with 
fire and brimstone, into which all men deserved to be put, 
and into which all were surely going unless they availed 
themselves of the only means of escape, which could be 
procured only of the church. The church secured a 
monopoly of salvation by assuring all men that there was 
no other name under heaven, given among men, whereby 
they might be saved. 

Horrible descripitions of the torments of purgatorial 
flames and the fires of hell have been poured into the 
ears of little children, too young to understand anything 
but the horror of it, for nearly 2,000 years, and this fiend- 
ish mental torture is allowed to go on “in the name of 
the Lord ” in all parts of the world. Good people are 
importuned to give of their substance that this diabolical 


148 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


stuff may be sent to the heathen, who are “perishing for 
the bread of life.” 

Some excellent moral precepts have been incorporated 
with this devilish theology, which have acted as a con- 
diment or flavoring extract, making it more easily swal- 
lowed by an ignorant and trusting world. In some “com- 
munions” it has been persistently taught that a saintly 
life, full of good deeds and marked by unselfishness in 
every action, was no passport to eternal bliss, but only an 
encouragement to a false hope, which was closely akin to 
the hope of the hypocrite and would surely lead to perdi- 
tion. 

It was one of the problems of the nineteenth century, 
which has been passed over to the twentieth century for 
solution, whether the world has yet reached that stage in 
its evolutionary history when a democracy, a government 
of the people and by the people, can long endure. This 
problem seems to have been solved in the western hemis- 
phere, and by Great Britain and France, but in most other 
countries it is still a question which waits an answer. So 
in the spiritual realm, it is still a question whether or not 
mankind can worship God “in the beauty of holiness,” 
without the overshadowing despotism of a hierarchy 
whose theology is supremely absurd, lacking a shadow of 
truth, whose history would seem to indicate that the devil 
was its source of inspiration. Certainly those bodies 
which have broken away from the mother church, and 
eliminated from their creeds some of her fictions, have 
not shown and are not now showing that virility which 
promises a glorious and successful future. Democracy in 
the church must and will follow democracy in the state. 
Perhaps the world must wait yet for centuries before 
ecclesiastical and spiritual despotism can be sent along 
that road over which political despotisms are now so 
rapidly moving. 

The Dark Ages were the product of a political cataclysm 
which reminds us of the physical cataclysms of the Car- 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 149 


boniferous or Cambrian ages. Greek art and culture, 
Roman law and genius for government, were covered over 
with Germanic savagery, and in it all was a modicum of 
primitive Christianity which was early corrupted by 
priestcraft till Jesus Christ would have recognized in the 
church little for which He lived and died. 


Politically, the barbarians were no more able to replace 
the Roman government which they had destroyed with 
a just and stable government of their own, than they were 
able to appreciate the art and literature of Greece or the 
majesty of Roman law and justice. For centuries there 
was in Europe government only in spots, and much of 
the time and in most places it was chaos. Not until the 
time of Charlemagne was there a government able to 
maintain order, administering some sort of rude justice 
over an extended area and with reasonable regularity. 


For this reason feudalism flourished over much of 
Europe for many centuries. As a general government 
failed to give protection, the people were forced to appeal 
to some local leader or lord about whom they could rally, 
and who would organize them into a small army and lead 
them in battle against invaders or plundering neighbors. 
These feudal lords or robber barons were at constant war 
with each other for purposes of plunder or for extension 
of territory, but, as there was little security for life or 
property, except under their protection, the great body of 
the people were obliged to range themselves under one 
or another of these lords. 

As a result of the constant wars and consequent inter- 
ference with domestic life, the growth of population was 
small and the great mass of the people was wretchedly 
poor. There was little encouragement for agriculture or 
the useful domestic arts, for the plundering over-lord took 
all there was, and the miserable peasant was fortunate if 
he had a hut in which to sleep on his bed made of straw or 
branches from the trees of the forest. He was sometimes 
fed, at irregular intervals, from his master’s table, but 


156 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


more often he depended upon his luck in the chase and 
the products of his crude agriculture. 

For many centuries, during the Dark Ages, life offered 
few sources of enjoyment; ignorance was complete and 
dense. There was no literature accessible to anyone, ex- 
cept the monks and priests, and these were often too igno- 
rant to read it. Superstition held complete dominion over 
the minds of all. Witchcraft was universally believed in, 
and was fostered and perpetuated by the church. Devils 
and fairies, evil spirits and demons, were believed to be all 
about, in the rocks and forests, streams and glens, in the 
animals and often in human beings. 

We can hardly imagine the discomforts of living or the 
unsanitary conditions which prevailed at that time. To 
the difficulties of daily life were added the certainty of 
purgatory and the probability of hell. A man was likely 
to be persecuted and burned at the stake for whatever he 
believed or did not believe. Thousands were burned for 
magic, witchcraft, sorcery, heresy and orthodoxy, and we 
can well imagine that in those ignorant times few people 
knew what they did believe. It seemed necessary for in- 
dividual initiative to be crushed out of Europe and every- 
thing brought down to one level of orthodoxy before 
modern Europe could commence its work of modern 
civilization. 

Throughout the Dark Ages, with all its wars, its chaos 
and its lack of progress, there was one institution that 
steadily increased its power and perfected its organization 
until it held complete control over the bodies and minds 
and souls of men. The right to think with that brain 
which God had spent millions of years to develop, and 
which is the crowning glory of His creation, was denied. 
That intellect which has weighed the stars and measured 
their distances and determined their chemical composition, 
mapped out their orbits and produced the telephone and 
the telegraph, the automobile, the steam engine, and the 
thousand devices of modern times; which is conquering 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 151 


disease, and will surely drive superstition from the minds 
of men; which has made life a joy and comfort instead 
of a terror, was not allowed to be used. The church was 
a political organization which compelled people to con- 
tribute their money to its support under threats and prom- 
ises. The church assumed absolute authority over the 
thoughts of men and never hesitated, when she had the 
power, to imprison and burn any man or woman who 
dared to think. The long list of her martyrs need not and 
cannot be incorporated here, for the names of countless 
thousands of them have been forgotten. 

While the church condemned sorcery and witchcraft 
and magic, one of its chief bulwarks was the performance 
of miracles. The Lives of the Saints is full of accounts 
of miracles which the faithful were compelled to accept 
on pain of death: the statue of a saint bowed its head to 
a penitent who was kneeling and praying before it; mar- 
velous cures of diseases were effected by visiting certain 
shrines; fearful epidemics were visited upon the people, 
or else they were stayed by the interposition of some 
saint; and to the present day these wonder stories are 
credited by a large portion of the faithful. 

The church arrogated to itself the supreme political 
power. It claimed the right to annoint or depose kings, 
and in a thousand ways interfered with the civil power in 
every government in Europe. As might be expected in 
such a state of society, the clergy and the heads of the 
church were as corrupt as the wonderful opportunities 
afforded them would allow. One needs only to read the 
history of the Dark Ages, or such works as the Memoirs 
of Benvenuto Cellini to learn something of the corruption 
and luxury and abuses of the medieval clergy. They 
seldom believed in and seldom practiced that form of re- 
ligion which does justly, loves mercy and walks humbly 
with God, and keeps its possessor unspotted by the in- 
iquity of the world. We do not read that men and women 
were burned at the stake for breaking the Ten Command- 


152 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


ments or neglecting to follow the teachings of the Sermon 
on the Mount, but they were burned by the tens of thou- 
sands for the slightest doubt as to the correctness or truth 
of the most insignificant point in the theology of the 
church, or for the least doubt as to its spiritual authority. 

But we must give the.church its due; it would not be 
just or wise to do otherwise. For 1,000 years it preserved 
much of the ancient literature, which probably otherwise 
would have been lost; and in scores of monasteries the 
ignorant monks copied all the books of the Bible and the 
classics of Greece and Rome, thus preserving for us much 
that adds to the joy of living. Then, too, the monks and 
priests ennobled labor, making of it, in many instances, the 
test of both dignity and merit. For many centuries, under 
Roman rule, the manual labor of Europe had been largely 
performed by slaves or serfs, and it was considered be- 
neath the dignity of cultured people to work. This stigma 
upon labor was largely lifted by the monks, who often 
spent much of their time in arduous tasks cultivating the 
fields, draining the swamps, cutting down the forests, 
erecting buildings. If work is Heaven’s first law, these 
men were obedient to it. 

Until the days of the early church there is no record 
to show that any organized effort was made to care for 
orphans or foundlings. These unfortunate little creatures 
were dependent upon the chance care of whoever might 
find them, and often, in many countries, were left to 
perish from exposure and starvation. It is to the credit 
of the early medieval church that the first organized and 
systematic care of these little waifs was undertaken by 
her in the name of the Lord. 

The care of the old, the sick, the feeble and the dying 
was also undertaken by the church, and has been to the 
present day carried on with great success and according 
to the best standards of medical and sanitary science. 
This and the care of children constitute the two human 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 153 


qualities which have strongly appealed to sympathetic 
hearts of all nations now for nearly 2,000 years. 

The Roman church was never friendly to human 
slavery, always sympathized with slaves and encouraged 
and approved their emancipation. The church contended 
that all men were equal before God, as His children, and 
that social conditions were human and temporary, and the 
servility of slavery incompatible with the plan of God’s 
kingdom. When the church became supreme, it was 
customary in many places to publicly emancipate the 
slaves as a part of the church service on Sunday, or on 
some special occasion of religious rejoicing. 

To the Catholic church is largely due the attitude of 
civilization toward marriage, divorce and the family. In 
this matter, as in many others, the church has assumed 
to declare, “Thus saith the Lord,’ when it was not the 
Lord but the church that spoke, and that with no au- 
thority from God. Marriage and the family were insti- 
tutions in existence for thousands of years before the 
church was ever heard of, and will be venerated institu- 
tions of civilization thousands of years after the church, 
as we know it, is forgotten, buried deep in the rubbish 
of antiquity. 

The prehistoric man, and the man of early historic 
times (and, for that matter, the man of the present day 
in many countries), took to himself as many wives as he 
could capture from his rivals, or purchase from their 
fathers, or steal away from their husbands, often with the 
connivance of the coveted women. Often their number 
was limited only by his ability to secure them or support 
them and their children. This was no sin in the times 
of Abraham and Jacob and David and Solomon. It was 
the custom and they had no reason to see any wrong in 
it. It was not the fact that he had numerous wives that 
led David to compose the wonderful penitential psalm 
after he had taken Bathsheba, but the fact that he had 
caused the death of her husband to get her; and Nathan 


154 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


denounced him, not for polygamy, but because he had 
taken from a poor, helpless man all that he had and then 
caused his death. With all his penitence, David kept the 
handsome lady, though he had numerous other wives. 

In the childhood of the race the strongest, wisest, 
bravest man was the best to propagate his kind, and it 
was best for the development of posterity that he should 
be the progenitor rather than his weaker and less intelli- 
gent rivals. What was right then is not right now, in the 
civilization of the twentieth century. In the course of 
ages affection has taken the place of purely animal in- 
stinct in many of the human race; and sympathy and a 
consideration for the feelings of the partner of many 
years, an appreciation of her trials and pains and anx- 
ieties in rearing her children, and a more correct under- 
standing of the rights of women, have led normal, virtu- 
ous men to see that to take plural wives was an injustice 
to each of them, especially the first one, and hence, mono- 
gamy has come to be the only right and lawful state of 
marriage. 

We must remember that women are not as strong as 
men, and that it is only in quite recent centuries that there 
has been any respect shown to weakness. Because the 
woman could not fight like the man, he considered her 
simply as a piece of property to be acquired and used and 
disposed of as best suited his convenience, and not as 
suited her feelings. Even in this country at the present 
time there are men who hold this view of the female sex. 
The present dignified position of women in the marriage 
state is due to the slow processes of evolution, and not to 
any church. 

The present attitude of the Catholic church, and its 
attitude for centuries towards marriage and divorce, has 
been shockingly immoral, if by immoral we mean that 
which is wrong. Until recently in some Catholic coun- 
tries, perhaps even now, there was no way provided for 
Protestants to be married. Marriage was one of the 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 155 


sacraments of the church, and could only be administered 
to those who were baptized and members of that church. 
Children born of marriages arranged outside of that 
church were illegitimate. In the United States the church 
tolerates mixed marriages from necessity, but frowns 
upon them. This attitude towards marriage is a specimen 
of unexampled impertinence on the part of the church. 
It is no more a matter for church dictation than other 
domestic matters. 

Marriage is a contract of the most solemn character, 
which should be entered into only after careful considera- 
tion, and which should be annulled only for good and 
sufficient reasons; but there are good and sufficient rea- 
sons, and when those reasons exist, a divorce should be 
granted, and the right to remarry should not be denied. 
There is nothing written in God’s Book that justifies the 
assumption that divorced persons must not marry. 

Another matter greatly to the credit of the early and 
medieval church was its effort to protect the chastity of 
the female slave. Its success was not always brilliant, 
but its attitude and rules were commendable. 

It seems to have been the plan of God, as written in 
this Book of Human History which He is writing, to 
reduce all men down to the same low level of intelligence, 
faith and practice, in order that modern civilization might 
be built up free from the polytheism of the ancient Greek 
and Roman culture. God is not an economist, and does 
not hesitate to throw away a period of culture when it 
has served its purpose, so that He may make room for 
the next higher stage in human development. 

As the mountains are thrown up by the forces of the 
interior earth, and are then worn down by great masses 
of ice, and ground up to make soil for the use of man, so 
the Grecianized Roman culture was destroyed by Ger- 
manic tribes, and then the church ground it up beneath 
the weight of 1,000 years of ecclesiastic despotism until 
nothing was left but a dead level of ignorance and super~ 


156 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


stition and vice, which made a soil in which modern 
civilization could grow. After this theological incubus 
had produced 1,000 years of mental and spiritual paraly- 
sis and death, a resurrection occurred, and mankind lived 
again. 

As a means of producing this unity of faith, the 
Catholic church invented and perfected the art of perse- 
cution, the like of which has never been seen in earth or 
hell before. The fathers failed to read, “Judge not that 
ye be not judged.” “Blessed are the meek.” “Blessed are 
the merciful.” “Love your enemies” and do good to 
them and “All things whatsoever ye would that men 
should do to you, do ye even so to them.” For centuries 
it was taught that eternal punishment by fire would be 
the portion of all those outside the church, and for all 
those in the church who were guilty of heresy. Persecu- 
tion and death by burning was an act of mercy because it 
prevented the growth and spread of heresy, and saved the 
souls of future generations from a like damnation. It 
added to the torture of these miserable heretics to burn 
them by a slow fire, that the agony might be prolonged, 
and serve as a lesson and warning to the beholders. Tens 
of thousands of Manichzeans were slain by the church, 
and countless other thousands “for the glory of God,” 
after suffering indescribable tortures. 

In the year 1208 the Inquisition was instituted by Pope 
Innocent IV, the object of which was to drive heresy 
from the earth. Its horrors none but God can tell. 31,000 
were burned in Spain alone, and equal numbers in other 
parts of Europe. 290,000 in Spain were condemned to 
other severe punishment.* “By a decree of the Council 
of Constance in 1415 the remains of Wycliffe were order- 
ed to be dug up and burned, an order which was carried 
out, at the command of Pope Martin V, by Bishop Flem- 
ing in 1428.”° The same council caused the burning 


4 Rationalism in Europe, Lecky, Vol. II, p. 40. 
5 Outline of History, H. G. Wells. Vol. II, p. 96. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 157 


alive of John Huss, because he was not a coward and 
dared to think, although his safety had been guaranteed 
by powerful influences. 

For centuries the pagan world had believed in oracles 
and magic, astrologers and demons, nymphs and devils 
and supernatural spirits, much as some people of the 
present day believe in fortune-tellers and palm readers; 
and in Rome there had been laws for the suppression of 
these arts. Under the Roman Emperor Constantine 
magicians were thrown to wild beasts, crucified, tortured 
and their flesh torn from their bones by iron hooks. 

It had always been an established doctrine of the church 
that the Devil and his angels were ever active about the 
Christian, tempting him every moment; but then, as now, 
the Devil was desperately afraid of holy water, and a few 
drops would drive him off, or the sign of the cross, or 
uttering the name of Mary. 

It eventually became a universal belief in the church 
that certain persons were in league with Satan, had sold 
themselves to him, and that he would assist them in any 
evil work. These supposed witches were generally elderly 
women who had sold themselves to the Devil for pur- 
poses of carnal intercourse, in return for which he was 
at their service. After the tenth century this doctrine ap- 
pears to have been in great favor, and one of the chief 
duties of bishops and priests was to hunt out and torture 
witches. The Black Death in the fourteenth century was 
followed by many trials for witchcraft, and practically no 
suspected person was acquitted. 

It is estimated on good authority that more than 9,000,- 
000 people were burned for witchcraft in Europe in the 
course of a few centuries. The church of Rome used 
every effort to stimulate the execution of witches. The 
burning of these poor creatures was preceded by tortures 
too horrible for contemplation; their bones were broken ; 
their fingers torn out; their eyes cut out; spikes were 
thrust into their flesh; they were kept awake for days; 


158 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


stripped of all their clothing and subjected to indignities 
and tortures which the mind of this century cannot im- 
agine. After the torturing had continued for days it was 
ended by burning in a slow fire. The world and the 
church had no pity for their suffering. 

“In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued a bull which gave 
a fearful impetus to the persecution of witches, and he 
commissioned Inquisitor Sprenger, who is said to have 
condemned hundreds to death every year. A similar bull 
was issued by Alexander VI in 1494, by Julius II in 
1504, by Leo X in 1521, and by Adrian VI in 1523.” ® 
7,000 were burned for witchcraft at Treves; 600 by the 
bishop of Bamburg; 800 in one year in the bishopric of 
Wurtzburg; at Towlouse, 400 in a single execution; 
Remy, a judge at Nancy, boasted that he had put to death 
800 witches in 16 years.“ The executions for witchcraft 
in Paris were beyond computation. 

Witchcraft was one of the many fictions which Pro- 
testantism took over from the mother church, and in pro- 
testant England and Scotland the persecutions for witch- 
craft were as numerous and cruel as in any Catholic 
country. In Geneva, under Calvin, 500 witches were 
executed in 3 months. Martin Luther and John Knox 
were firm believers in witchcraft and zealous for its ex- 
termination by the death of all those found to be guilty 
of a compact with Satan. Even John Wesley was a be- 
liever in witchcraft, and the Scotch clergy as late as 1678 
tortured and burned witches in the most horrible manner. 


6 Rationalism in Europe, Lecky, p. 32. 
7 Rationalism in Europe, Lecky, p. 29. 


CHAPTER XII 


The persecution of the Jews was a form of heresy- 
hunting that was especially dear to the Christian heart for 
several centuries. Jews had been cruelly persecuted and 
massacred by pagans and Mohammedans, but it was re- 
served for the church to go the limit; and that great body 
may rest in peace, assured that in no past age have its 
barbarities and injustices been exceeded in any cause or 
against any people, nor will they be exceeded in the future. 

The Jews have been a great factor, perhaps the greatest 
factor, in the preservation of civilization and in the hu- 
manizing of humanity. For these many, many centuries 
they have worshipped the one God, in spite of all the 
terrors and tortures that pagans and Christians could in- 
vent, and this worship has been free from the fantastics 
which have added variety to the worship of all other 
creeds. It has always been safe to persecute the Jews, 
for they have always been in the minority and it has 
always been profitable, because the Jews, by reason of 
their industry, economy, intelligence and business sagacity, 
have always accumulated wealth, which it was easy to 
seize as these poor creatures were stripped and driven to 
death or exile, which was often worse than death. 

The Jews have always been students, and in whatever 
country exiled, they have always stood with the best in 
their knowledge of history, philosophy, law, grammar, 
rhetoric, mathematics, astronomy, theology, exegetics, 
poetry and medicine. Partly through their close contact 
with the Arabs and the Moors their scholarship was un- 
doubtedly the highest in Europe from the tenth to the 
eighteenth centuries. Modern civilization owes a debt to 
the Arabs which is often not appreciated. The Arabs 
were pioneers in mathematics, algebra, geometry, trigo- 

159 


160 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


nometry and astronomy. They invented the pendulum. 
Much that is known about medicine came from the 
Arabs. In all the sciences they were original investiga- 
tors and leaders. They made glass, pottery, dyestuffs, 
and worked in all the metals; excelled in agriculture, and 
horticulture, and introduced the manufacture of paper 
into Europe. Probably they learned the manufacture of 
paper from the Chinese. 

The Jews were always quiet, law-abiding people, do- 
mestic in their habits, and if, in the centuries of injustice 
through which they have lived and thrived, they have de- 
veloped a certain skill in “spoiling the Gentiles,’ it can 
undoubtedly be attributed to the treatment they have re- 
ceived. 

In the fourteenth century in Spain the Jews were con- 
tinually driven from their homes, robbed of their posses- 
sions, and burned to death. In one year 280 were burned 
in Seville alone. In 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella (of 
blessed memory) issued an edict ordering all Jews to leave 
Spain within 4 months, unless they were willing to em- 
brace Christianity and be baptized. To add to the cruelty 
not one grain of gold or silver were they allowed to take 
with them out of Spain. What else of value could they 
take? It was proposed by the wealthy Jews that, if all 
Jews could be given immunity from the effects of this 
edict by its revocation, a large sum in gold would be paid, 
and these two pious sovereigns were inclined to take the 
bribe. But they were assured by Torquemada, the Domini- 
can Inquisitor, that if they accepted this Jewish gold they 
would thereby place themselves in the class of Judas 
Iscariot, who sold his Lord for 30 pieces of silver. Con- 
sequently the Jews were driven out. Of course, it was 
the Christian duty of this most Christian king and queett 
and of the holy church to seize all the gold and valuables 
of these infidel, blaspheming Jews before they left the 
country, and use it for “the glory of God.’ From 300,- 
000 to 800,000 Jews, variously estimated, were driven out 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 161 


of Spain in utter destitution at this time, to perish in the 
Atlantic or the Mediterranean, or to starve in Africa, to 
be sold as slaves, the females to be sold into the harems 
of the Turks. A few were baptized into the church, and 
some fled to Portugal, from which country they were 
soon driven out with equal horrors. 

In 1680, during the festivities which followed the mar- 
riage of Charles II of Spain, many Jews and Jewesses 
were burned for the amusement of the populace. A 
Jewess 17 years of age, said to be very beautiful, ap- 
pealed in vain for mercy to the bride of the king. What 
an awful commentary on the church which professed to 
imitate Him of whom it was said: “A bruised reed shall 
he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench,” and 
again: “I will have mercy and not sacrifice.” 

The persecutions of the Jews were equally atrocious in 
the other countries of Europe. In France, from the 
eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, massacres and plun- 
derings were frequent. Louis IX, “for the benefit of his 
soul,” appropriated to his own use a third of the obliga- 
tions held by Jews against his subjects. In 1306 all Jews 
were expelled from France, but in a few years they were 
allowed to return on condition that two-thirds of all that 
was due them should be forfeited to the king. 

The cities of Germany were not behind those of France 
and Spain in their persecution of Jews, and their streets 
were deluged for centuries with the blood of these perse- 
cuted children of Abraham. 

England was a little better than these other countries 
apparently because she did not have as many Jews to kill. 
In 1290, after plunderings and massacres as horrible as 
the imagination can picture, the Jews were all driven 
from England. 

It seems to have been a necessary part of the divine 
plan of evolution that these centuries of persecution 
should do their work to prove to all future generations 
that the human mind cannot be driven either to accept 


162 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


or abandon a belief, by persecution; neither can the truth 
itself be buried or destroyed by force or ridicule or 
sophistry or persecution. “Truth crushed to earth shall 
rise again. The eternal years of God are hers.” If this 
thing be of God you cannot destroy it, and if it be not of 
God it will perish. : 

For several hundred years the church was not in sym- 
pathy with the drama; actors could receive none of the 
rites of the church, and the faithful were forbidden to 
witness theatrical entertainments; but, at a later time, the 
church made use of religious dramas for the instruction 
and amusement of the people, and largely withdrew its 
wholesale condemnation of actors and theatres. 

At the same time, and for centuries, the monks and 
church officials disapproved of the possession of works 
of art, especially statuary, which had been made by 
pagans. Hence, many pieces of priceless value were de- 
stroyed as being likely to be inhabited by demons or devils. 
“Most of the statues that had been transported to Con- 
stantinople and had survived the fury of the monks were 
destroyed by the Iconoclasts, the Crusaders or the Mo- 
hammedans.” } 


1 Rationalism in Europe, Lecky. 


CHAPTERGCXTIUT 


In the twelfth century Europe began to show slight 
symptoms of waking from its 1,000 years of intellectual 
sleep, and there began to be a revival of the study of 
Latin literature. Occasionally a man might be found 
who dared to think, though he did so at the peril of his 
life. 

Not only in matters of religion, but in science, the 
church assumed to decide what was truth, while it pos- 
sessed none of the qualifications to decide in either case. 
The theories of Copernicus, which were first promulgated 
in 1543, were condemned by the church as late as 1616, 
and the condemnation and imprisonment of Galileo oc- 
curred soon after. 

The church has never been able to learn that its con- 
demnation of a scientific proposition does not alter the 
facts; and that evolution will crush all that opposes it, 
regardless of the venerable character of its opponents, 
or the sanctity of the robes which envelop them. 

Modern civilization may be said to have had its be- 
ginning at the time of the invention of printing, about 
1450, and it is noticed that it advanced at about equal 
rate, if not along identical lines, in many of the countries 
of Europe and America. Nations are, like individuals, 
possessed of different gifts, which they are able to improve 
for the benefit of all in their own peculiar way. 

Modern civilization could never have developed without 
the art of printing and the making of paper. It was 
necessary that the Book which God is writing, not only 
in inanimate nature but in the hearts and minds of men, 
and in the great political, social, intellectual and moral 
movements of history, should be printed so that all men 
might read. “He that can read hath the keys of knowl- 

163 


164 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 
edge,” and the art of printing has made it possible for 
millions to become learned who else must have lived and 
died as ignorant as the beasts. Among these millions an 
occasional genius appears, who, but for the art of printing, 
would have lived and died in ignorance and obscurity. By 
reading he became wise, and the world was blessed by a 
Shakespeare, or a Newton, or a Watt, or a Pasteur, or a 
Lister, or a Roosevelt. 

The Reformation, initiated by Luther and his co- 
adjutors and contemporaries, could never have accom- 
plished its great work had it not been for the art of 
printing, which made it possible for the masses of people 
in many countries to be informed of their right to think 
in God’s world. This great revelation made to mankind 
by the Reformation marks a new era in the world’s his- 
tory. For 1,000 years it had been considered the most 
heinous of crimes to think; men could break all the Ten 
Commandments and violate every precept in the Sermon 
on the Mount with comparative safety, but if they did a 
little independent thinking, torture and the stake were 
sure to be their portion, though their lives conformed to 
every tenet of morality, and they loved the Lord their 
God with all their minds and souls and strength. 

Martin Luther was, perhaps, the bravest man that ever 
lived; at any rate, he was not afraid to face the devil in 
human form, and all the devil’s angels were not able to 
put him to flight or to recover for their master that domi- 
nation over the human soul which he had held for more 
than I,000 years. 

It was assertion and maintenance of the right of inde- 
pendent thought and private judgment which were the 
crowning work and glory of the Reformation, and not the 
theology of the reformers. For these had taken over 
from the mother church most of her fictions and super- 
stitions, and 400 years has still not eliminated them from 
Protestantism. Satan still goes about in the Protestant 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 165 


churches like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, 
and the faithful are daily “tempted of the devil.” 


A religion which has originated in a barbarous age and 
in a crude civilization will inevitably, whatever may have 
been the purity of its original faith, be loaded with super- 
stition and perverted by priestcraft. As civilization ad- 
vances, this theological load will greatly hinder its accept- 
ance by intelligent people, and it is sure to degenerate 
into a despotism of dogmas which have nothing to do 
with a saintly life. The church must modify its theology 
or perish. Advancing civilization and generally diffused 
intelligence will not accept or tolerate the horrible 
medieval theology which so far the church of Rome has 
refused to change. That church is medieval still; its 
belief in miracles and holy water, and in the efficacy of 
the sacraments has not changed in 500 years. It is safe 
to say that in all that time it has learned nothing. 

“In addition to the truth of the doctrine of evolution, 
indeed, one of its greatest merits in my eyes is that it 
occupies a position of complete and irreconcilable antag- 
onism to that vigorous and consistent enemy of the high- 
est intellectual, moral and social life of mankind, the 
Garholticrchurch.. + 

The sentiment attached to a symbol explains the atti- 
tude to the church of many honest, simple, pious souls. 
It is the church of their fathers, in which have been 
solemnized the marriages of their ancestors for centuries, 
and into the membership of which all of their blood re- 
lations have been inducted by baptism and confirmation. 
Their beloved dead have been assured of a blessed im- 
mortality through the efficacy of its sacraments, who else 
must have perished eternally in the fires of hell. Why 
should they not venerate its clergy, and love and obey its 
services and commands? The fact that the horrors from 
which it promises to save them are pure fictions, and that 


1 Darwinians, Huxley, p. 147. 


166 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


it is the chief purpose of the church to make them mental 
slaves, is not apparent to ignorant and trusting souls. 
Spirituality is not required of them, neither is growth in 
grace; only trust the church and attend its services, and 
the trip through purgatory may be arranged on vesti- 
buled Pullman trains, with diners and sleeping cars at- 
tached. 

The physical and moral and spiritual world are one, 
and the same God rules over them all. Evolution is His 
great law, revealed to us in Nature and in the history of 
mankind. We may rest assured that no church can for- 
ever keep in bondage the minds and souls of men. Ig- 
norance and gullibility have been its only hold upon men 
in the past, and will be its only hold on them today. Men 
are fated to be freed from political, economic or indus- 
trial, spiritual and ecclesiastical bondage, but how soon 
this freedom will be attained we cannot tell. The gulli- 
bility of the human race is past comprehension; let an 
ignoramus announce some utterly ridiculous method of 
the cure of disease and how quickly numerous people will 
flock about him! Or let the same ignoramus get a Bible 
and start a new religion which is to save the world, and 
thousands of people will flock to him. 

Nothing could more clearly show the medieval char- 
acter and the absurdity of the claims of the Roman church 
than the following verbatim extracts from recent news- 
papers, and a magazine issued by the church: 


“The Dominican Fathers will conduct a mission at St. Joseph's 
Church from October 19th until November 16th. Rev. * * 
stated this morning: “The object of the mission is to che 
extraordinary opportunities for worthily receiving the sacra- 
ments and hearing the word of God. The church enriches with 
wonderful favors those who make the mission well, and it is 
earnestly hoped that not one member of the parish will fail to 
profit by this season of grace.’ An indulgence of seven years and 
two hundred and eighty days can be gained by all who attend five 
of the evening sermons; a plenary indulgence for those attending 
the evening sermons, receive the sacraments and pray for the 
intentions of the Pope; a second plenary indulgence can be 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 167 


gained by all who receive the sacraments during the mission and 
pray for the intentions of the Pope; a third plenary indulgence 
can be gained by those who attend all the exercises of the mission 
for three days continuously; confession, communion and prayer 
for the Pope’s intentions; a fourth plenary indulgence can be 
gained in the form of the Papal blessing by all who attend at 
least half the exercises of the mission. Conditions: Confession, 
communion and prayer for the Pope’s intentions. All who attend 
the mission should be present at the closing exercises when the 
Pope’s blessing is given. During the mission the extraordinary 
indulgences of four hundred eighty-five years and fifty days 
can be gained for each public recitation of the rosary. In addi- 
tion to this, fifty years once a day can be gained.” 


The following advantages are offered to those who 
subscribe to a certain magazine, or contribute liberally of 
their money: 

SPIRITUAL BENEFITS 


For Our Subscribers 


In Our Home for the Blind we have the Great Blessing of 
Adoration of the 
Most BLesseD SACRAMENT 


which is a source of so many graces for those whom it has been 
established for. 

Hour by hour the Blind kneel in turn, and while they adore, 
half of each hour is given to the Holy Souls. 


Tue Rosary Is Sarp Every Hour 


for your departed ones. This is a very special privilege, and one 
that should encourage all to participate in its benefits. 

Imagine the Blind kneeling in the silence of the Chapel, and 
there pouring forth their petitions for their benefactors, When 
you are about your daily duties, and not thinking of your spiritual 
needs, those poor Blind are supplicating for you and your chil- 
dren, and by their prayers averting many dangers that you will 
never know until you stand before the great Judgment Seat. 


THE Hoty Sours ArE REMEMBERED 


most fittingly. Anyone who may wish one of his dead prayed for 
in perpetuity can send to the Home of the Blind Ten Dollars and 
the name of the person is placed on a list. 


WHERE THE BLIND PRAY 


It would be a fitting memorial for a devoted son or daughter to 
place on that list the names of deceased parents; such an act 
would be well worthy a dutiful and affectionate child. 


168 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


We Asx You to Hetp Tu1s GREAT WorK 


to benefit your own soul and the souls of your deceased relatives 
and friends. 
We promise you in return the following spiritual advantages: 
All the Sisters and the Blind will offer special prayers three 
times a day for your intentions, and the souls of your deceased 
friends and relatives. . 


Tuere Are Ergot NoveNAS oF MASSEs, 


2,500 Masses and a special remembrance in 5,000 Masses during 
the year for all solicitors, benefactors and members. 

Each person donating the sum of Fifty Dollars will have his 
name, or that of a deceased relative or friend, engraved on a 
marble tablet for honorary members in the Chapel of St. 
Joseph’s Home for the Blind. 


Address all correspondence to 
Mothert.*r hae 
*k OK * k ek KX OK & 

x ee Tent TOOL 


“Provide for your soul while you are alive, and do for yourself 
what you would wish your heirs to do for you. How soon are 
the dead forgotten by the living! The heirs enjoy their fortune, 
while the deceased suffers in Purgatory and vainly exclaims: 
‘Have pity on me, at least you, my friends, because the Hand of 
the Lord hath touched me.’ If you wish never to be forgotten 
and to have prayers and Holy Masses offered for the repose of 
your soul, make a donation to St. Joseph’s Home for Aged Blind, 
or a bequest in your last will in favor of them.” 


“Any solicitor who sends us the names and addresses of fifty 
new subscribers during the year will have his or her name entered 
on our perpetual membership list, and will share in all the benefits 
given to Perpetual Members of the pious union of prayer, during 
life and after death. Those who secure one hundred new mem- 
bers within the year will be enrolled as honorary members, and 
will have their names engraved on the marble tablet in our 
Chapel at the home of the blind. Besides the benefits of Per- 
petual Membership, a special high mass or requiem is offered once 
a month for all whose names are recorded on the list of 
honorary members.” 


God’s ways are not as our ways, and His thoughts are 
not as our thoughts. The current theologies of Christen- 
dom have overlooked this fact. They have made God 
simply a big man, moved by the same emotions, delighted 
with the affection or adoration of men and women, angry 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 169 


when human beings do what the theologians say they 
should not do: a God to be teased into doing what He 
otherwise neglects to perform, just as a father or mother 
may be teased by a determined child to do what they did 
not intend. A God who may be induced to change His 
mind if teased long enough by enough people, just as a 
trimming politician may be induced to change his mind as 
often as expediency suggests. 

While the confessions of faith in some Protestant 
churches have not greatly changed in 300 years, it is safe 
to say as the devout Scotch Presbyterian lady said: 
“These things are not taken seriously now.” When men 
are allowed to think, they will correct their own errors, 
and when a proposition has been tested by science and 
experience and common sense, if it fails to stand these 
tests, it will no longer be accepted as the truth. Thou- 
sands of men and women all over the earth are searching 
for the truth in all departments of science, and when a 
truth is found, that means that one of God’s laws has 
been discovered by searching, and one step more has been 
taken toward finding out the Almighty. 

All education should be religious, because it should be 
an imparting of truth, and truth is a major part of re- 
ligion; if the things taught are not true, they have no part 
in true religion. In the past education by churches or 
denominational bodies has been so overloaded with ecclesi- 
astical or theological dogmas as to be almost worthless 
and often harmful. 

The late Jonathan Edwards found the “doctrine of elec- 
tion” a very “sweet and comforting doctrine,” in that, as 
men were the natural enemies of God, and justly deserved 
eternal damnation, it was an act of great mercy that He 
had ‘“‘elected” that some few should be saved, and had 
“elected from all eternity” that all the rest of mankind 
should be damned. The world has grown wiser since then, 
and this doctrine has only to be stated to receive that 
ridicule and contempt which it deserves. It was an in- 


170 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


vention of men, and is nowhere recorded in the Book 
which God is writing. 

The miracles of our day are the miracles of science, not 
the suspension of some of the laws of God, but the in- 
telligent application of those laws by men who have found 
them out by searching.» What could be more beyond the 
dreams of fancy than the telegraph or the telephone or 
the wireless telegraph or telephone? How easy it would 
be to convince the most intelligent man of a century ago 
that these things were the direct work of the devil, or of 
spirits, or of God himself, if only you kept him in igno- 
rance of the actual methods of their operation! Equally 
miraculous is the airplane, the automobile, the modern 
printing press, the sewing machine, the steamship and 
hundreds of other devices of inventive genius. These 
things are all a part of the great Book that God is writing 
in the history of the world; and greater things than these 
are to follow, for, since man’s mind has been liberated 
from the curse of theological orthodoxy, he has been free 
to search out the laws of God and think for himself. No 
stretch of the imagination will cover the wonderful revela- 
tions of God and His laws which the next century will 
disclose. 


CHAPTER XIV 


In no field have the revelations of science been more 
wonderful and beneficent than in the fields of medicine 
and surgery. The physician whom you know may be an 
ignorant man, probably a conceited man, and perhaps 
not a very good man; but he belongs to the greatest of 
the professions, to which humanity owes more than can 
be computed, a debt which only eternity can pay. By 
the use of anzsthetics all pain has been eliminated from 
surgical procedures, and thereby have been rendered 
possible many operations which otherwise could not be 
performed. In hospitals all over the world every day 
hundreds of operations are performed which save the 
lives of people, and add many years to their usefuless. 
Are not the names of Lister and Pasteur and Morton 
more worthy to be placed in the halls of fame than that 
of the proudest statesman, or the commander in a hundred 
battles ? 

Equally brilliant are the triumphs in the field of medi- 
cine. Asiatic cholera used to sweep over the world and 
carry off hundreds of thousands of people. It will never 
again gain a foothold in any community where the advice 
of educated physicians is heeded. The bubonic plague, 
which, in the Dark Ages, decimated Europe, will never 
again gain a foothold where modern sanitary rules are ob- 
served. Smallpox, which once caused the death of 1/3 
of Europe’s population and disfigured the rest, will never 
again occur in a civilized community. The mortality in 
diphtheria, within the memory of many physicians now 
in active practice, was about 50% ; under present methods 
of practice and sanitation the mortality is about 8% and 
the number of cases comparatively few. Yellow fever 
has been driven from all civilized communities, and 

171 


172 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


malaria is largely, if not completely, under control. In 
maternity cases, in private practice among cleanly people, 
the mortality is now probably about I case in 500 as 
against an unknown but frightful mortality up to the 
middle of the nineteenth century. 

These are but a few of the many instances in which 
medical science has triumphed over disease, and these 
victories are due entirely to the patient searching out of 
God’s law by earnest, devoted and devout men and women. 
These laws were not handed down, written upon tables of 
stone, but were revealed to the humble searcher. 

A few diseases, like cancer, consumption, influenza and 
pneumonia still defy the efforts of science, but are we not 
justified in hoping that in the near future they will be as 
completely under control as are cholera and yellow fever? 


CHAPTER XV 


As we consider more particularly the intellectual and 
spiritual side of man, we find the law of ceaseless conflict 
as operative as it was in the physical or material. Man 
is blessed or tormented by many instinctive fears, which 
are race memories, coming down to him from a remote 
past. Fear of the dark seems to be almost universal 
among little children. This is a race memory of the time 
when outside of the cave where he dwelt, the darkness 
was inhabited by the lion, the bear, the hyena and the 
tiger, against which he had no weapons but his naked fists. 
The fear of snakes seems to be the remnant of a race 
memory of that time when the naked body had no pro- 
tection against the serpent hidden in the underbrush and 
likely to strike him from its ambush at any moment. The 
little child is afraid of strangers, not because he has ever 
been injured, but because he has an inherited fear dating 
back to the time when all strangers were brutes, and when 
the mother carefully and constantly instilled into its mind 
the necessity of escape and the advisability of hiding from 
the stranger whose motives were uncertain, and likely to 
be evil. The fear of lightning and thunder is due to 
another of these race memories, which is almost universal 
among ignorant adults and little children. This fear is an 
inheritance from the time when the lightning was sup- 
posed to be the shafts thrown by an angry god, and the 
thunder was his voice. 

Eclipses and conjunctions of stars, earthquakes and 
epidemics of fatal diseases have been attributed to the 
wrath of the gods for thousands of years, and this has 
furnished occupation to astrologers, soothsayers, magi- 
cians, fortune-tellers and palm readers without number. 


Many people of intelligence and who are without super- 
173 


174 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


stition “see things’? when alone on a lonely road at night, 
and these same people “hear things” when alone in a large 
house at night. 

These fears are the negative side of the ceaseless con- 
flict which has gone on in nature, and represent man’s 
attitude towards those forces with which he was unable 
to contend successfully. These fears are reflex or nega- 
tive functions which require no thought or intelligence, 
and are inherited from the ancestors of the old Stone Age 
or further back. 

Perhaps we see these ancestral reflex traits more clearly 
marked in women than in men. Woman has always been 
the weaker vessel, not able to protect herself and her 
children by brute force, and hence obliged to depend upon 
her cunning and her resources other than strength when 
her male protector was not at hand. The physiological 
function of the woman is to perpetuate the race, for which 
purpose she must find a father for her children; hence, 
those arts and smiles and tricks of the toilette which will 
attract and please the male and which are as natural to 
her as the shape of her teeth or the color of her hair. 
For countless ages the father of her children was all that 
stood between her and her children and starvation. He 
must not only find them food, but must defend them from 
the carnivorous beasts that were ever ready to devour 
them, She must make herself so pleasing to her lord that 
no other women would be able to absorb so much of his 
attention that she and her children would be left unpro- 
tected. These coquettish ways are as much a part of her 
nature as that mother love which nothing can extinguish, 
which is properly termed “the greatest thing in the world.” 
Woman should no more be criticized for the one than 
for the other. 

Man was always a gregarious animal, for only by union 
in the herd or pack was there safety for the individual, 
and when the woman had picked out the strongest in the 
pack to be the father of her children, she had also selected 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 178 


the fittest for that purpose. Natural and sexual selection 
had been operating upon our simian ancestry for millions 
of years before the beast-man was evolved, and we know 
not how many millions of years have elapsed since man 
separated from that ancestry. When variations in in- 
telligence became of more importance than physical con- 
formation, then the development towards man com- 
menced. 

The development of speech, which must have been a 
very slow process, opened the way for tradition, history, 
poetry, science, philosophy and sociability long before the 
art of writing was ever dreamed of. This development 
of speech must have commenced very early, at least not 
later than when man ceased to be an animal, and perhaps 
earlier, as we are led to believe that certain apes and 
monkeys have a limited vocabularly which they use in 
conversation among themselves. It seems certain that 
dogs understand something of human speech, though un- 
able to reply articulately. 

When man was simply an animal, matters of sex gave 
him no concern. Promiscuity was the universal rule, and 
the females belonged to the strongest, who for that reason 
were the fittest to propagate. Seed time and harvest and 
reproduction, in all its forms, were early deified by primi- 
tive man, as they typified the perpetuity and salvation of 
the race. It seems probable that permanent wedlock was 
a neolithic achievement, and that monogamy is a custom 
of comparatively recent adoption. 

The long and plastic period of infancy and childhood 
in the human race made the development of parental and 
filial affection an inevitable consequence. Conjugal affec- 
tion was a natural consequence of the long years of care 
and mutual solicitude for the growing child. Their loves 
and hopes and fears for the helpless infant were identical, 
and how could the parents avoid loving each other, when 
each loved the child so much and the child in turn loved 
them both? As these experiences, both personal and an- 


176 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


cestral, were registered in the plastic growing brain of 
the child, the beginnings of a moral nature were de- 
veloped. In the lower orders of animals there is no in- 
fancy, and, hence, little that can be termed morality. 

This prolonged infancy, the deeply convoluted brain 
and extraordinary teachableness are the characteristics of 
the genus homo and the causes of human advancement. 
The furrows and creases in the human brain increase in 
number and depth if the brain is used in study and 
thought till old age. These furrows and creases and 
convolutions are much smaller and less in number in the 
peasant and the working man than in the thoughtful 
scholar. 

Feelings of affection for the brothers and sisters and 
youthful companions of the growing child would naturally 
develop, and later for the clan or tribe which gave him 
protection. Here we have the beginnings of ethics, con- 
science and morality and loyalty. 

In the evolutions of the past we find a prophecy of 
continued improvement in mental and moral and spiritual 
natures, and we are able to perceive that physical and 
mental evolution must precede altruism. 


CHAPTER XVI 


Unconscious evolution has no conscience; it is entirely 
material ; it is the survival of the fittest, which means the 
one most in harmony with his environment and able to 
Overcome or subdue all competitors. In our age of the 
world we have the higher stage of evolution working 
beside the lower or material stage. 

We have the man of ideals who is striving for better 
things, and who is willing to lay down his life for the 
good of others. This man often meets the fate of Jesus 
Christ, because his ideals are not in harmony with the 
thoughts of his contemporaries, and personally he is an 
irritation to those who have no sympathy with his al- 
truistic notions; so the best way to get rid of him is to 
stone him or crucify him. His ideals are sure to survive, 
though his personality perishes. This idealist is a pro- 
phetic type, and heralds “the coming of the Lord.” 

We of the twentieth century are in the midst of this 
glorious conflict; the better and higher ideals are slowly 
prevailing, but we must still make human sacrifices on 
many battlefields before the mental and moral and spirit- 
ual in man is able to rule the world, and eliminate physi- 
cal strife. Where has this idea been expressed more beau- 
tifully than by Julia Ward Howe? 


BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC 


Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; 
He is tramping out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are 


stored ; 
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; 
His truth is marching on. 


I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; 
They have builded Him an Bee the evening dews and damps; 


178 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps; 
His day is marching on. 


I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel; 

“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; 

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel, 
Since God is marching on.” 


He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; 

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat; 

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet! 
Our God is marching on. 


In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, 

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me: 

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, 
While God is marching on. 


Kindness, unselfishness, sympathy, love for humanity, 
have not been exercised long enough by enough people to 
have established a racial inheritance which will make them 
“second nature” to all men. Their opposites are still kept 
strong by use, and are a racial inheritance in most men. 

The Greek philosophers, Thales and Pythagoras, had 
quite clear conceptions of evolution. About 100 B. C. 
the Latin philosopher, Lucretius, perceived dimly the 
same truth, and in recent centuries Swedenborg and Kant 
almost apprehended the modern evolutionary thought 
which reached fruition in the mind of Charles Darwin.t 

“The principle of natural selection is intensely Calvin- 
istic; it elects the one and damns the ninety and nine: to 
him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not 
shall be taken away even that which he hath.” 2 

The advent of man probably marks the highest attain- 
ment in organic or physical evolution. From this point 
onward evolution is largely dependent upon the mental, 
moral, spiritual, ethical qualities in him. His ideals are 
the governing factors in evolution. Human history shows 
a constant and, at time, a rapid movement towards better 


1 Joseph LeConte. 
2 Through Nature to God, John Fisk, p. 66. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 179 


things, all as the result of man’s volition. He changes 
the appearance, character and habits of both plants and 
animals to make them more subservient to his needs; and, 
in the future, will give such attention to the breeding of 
his own species as to greatly improve the human stock. 

“T know of no study which is so utterly saddening as 
that of the evoultion of humanity, as it is set forth in the 
annals of history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric 
ages man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin 
strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent 
than the other brutes; a blind prey to impulses, which as 
often as not lead him to destruction; a victim to endless 
illusions, which make his mental existence a terror and a 
burden, and fill his physical life with barren toil and 
battle. He attains a certain degree of physical comfort, 
and develops a more or less workable theory of life in 
such favorable situations as the plains of Mesopotamia or 
of Egypt, and then for thousands and thousands of years 
struggles with varying fortunes, attended by infinite 
wickedness, bloodshed and misery, to maintain himself at 
this point against the greed and ambition of his fellow- 
men. He makes a point of killing and otherwise perse- 
cuting all those who first try to get him to move on; and 
when he has moved on a step, foolishly confers post- 
mortem deification on his victims. The best men of the 
best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blun- 
ders, and commit the fewest sins.’ 3 

In the conscious evolution of the future it is the moral 
and spiritual in man that must control. It is a new thing 
for governments to attempt to justify their actions on 
moral grounds, but more and more we see the great states- 
men of the great nations of the earth trying to prove to 
the world that they have done and are striving to do the 
righteous thing. When most men can be induced to 
order their lives according to these principles of right and 
wrong, it will make life easier and happier for everyone, 


8 Science and Christian Tradition, Huxley, p. 256. 


180 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


and the necessity for fighting and bloodshed will dis- 
appear. 

It is one of the laws of God that nothing worth while 
can be obtained without work, which means a conflict 
with Nature in some of her forms: if a man would be 
wise, he must study and think; if he would be good, he 
must maintain an eternal conflict with the animal that is 
in him; if he would be rich, he must either revert to the 
predatory habits of his simian ancestors, or exercise his 
intelligence and his physical powers to the utmost; some 
rich men have done both. Men are eternally trying to 
obtain wisdom or piety or riches without paying the price, 
but God never gives anything away. Man must pay. 
Religions and philosophies innumerable have been in- 
vented which were and are guaranteed to lift the soul, 
in a moment, from the selfish, sensual, material abyss into 
which it has sunk or from which it has never risen, and 
insure it a place in a heaven of animal enjoyment. These 
religionists and philosophers forget that the devil can only 
be cast out by fasting and prayer; that the animal in man 
must be overcome, and that righteousness on earth must 
precede a joyful heaven. 

“The intelligence which has converted the brother of 
the wolf into the faithful guardian of the flock ought to 
be able to do something towards curbing the instincts of 
savagery in civilized man.” # 

Evolution demands and presupposes theism. The ex- 
istence of evil or sin simply evidences that evolution has 
not yet reached perfection. Evil is the natural character- 
istic of the beast, and in the last analysis is selfishness. It 
was not evil in the lower stages of evolutionary develop- 
ment. 

Man’s material body was a necessity for the develop- 
ment of the soul and apparently it was created for no 
other purpose. It is the temple of God; the abiding place 
of the Holy Spirit, and should be maintained in spotless 


4 Evolution and Ethics, Huxley, p. 85. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 181 


purity. Sins of the body inevitably leave their mark upon 
the soul. “A man’s character impresses itself upon his 
face, his form and his clothing,’ and beauty in the soul 
is sure to be reflected upon the face. 

There would be no sense in the bounty of Nature if 
there were no mankind to use it. What use would there be 
for abundant harvests and all the woods of the forests, the 
iron and coal and oil, the stones and soils, and the powers 
of steam and electricity, if man had not appeared upon the 
earth to use them? All these things were intended for the 
development of his body, that it might become a suitable 
tenement for his soul. Toward this end Nature, which is 
God, has been working through all the ages. 

While it may be physically right to perform any act 
that will promote physical happiness or comfort, and while 
it may be mentally right to promote and develop learning 
and intelligence and all that tends to increase mental 
strength, it should never be forgotten that moral right 
pertains to the soul, which is the highest development of 
evolution, and that no physical or mental activities must 
ever be allowed to mar its beauty. The conscious soul is 
the greatest reality that we know of by personal experi- 
ence, and may well be called a child of God. 

“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, 
how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express 
and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehen- 
sion how like a God, the beauty of the world, the paragon 
of animals!” 

In the conflicts of material nature selfishness was the 
greatest virtue, as it was necessary to enable the strongest, 
wisest and shrewdest to survive, but on the moral plane, 
after the soul and spirit were born, a new law of evolu- 
tion became operative, and selfishness became the one and 
almost the only sin. The moral man, while he provides 
for and protects himself, will not harm his neighbors. 

During the savage stage of evolution and before, while 
man was slowly climbing from the beast, the qualities 


182 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


most desirable, even absolutely essential for his existence, 
were strength, cunning, a determination to slay his com- 
petitor for no other reason than that he was a competitor, | 
and a determination to seize and hold everything that 
pleased him, regardless of the feelings or rights of others. 
When he had demonstrated that he could successfully 
carry out these determinations, by means of his strength 
and cunning, he had demonstrated that he was the fittest 
to survive and propagate his species; for Nature, at this 
stage had no use for conscience, and no conscience had 
yet developed. 

It is a law of Nature (which means God), that evolu- 
tion never develops backward; when a stage of progress 
has been passed through, it is never repeated. When 
man entered the stage of civilization the moral qualities 
were developed as a sequence to the intellectual, and that 
which was right for the beast, and allowable in the grow- 
ing intelligence of the savage, became a sin to the civilized 
man. The persistence of these beastly qualities in a civili- 
zation which is very far advanced is the “original sin” 
of which we have heard so much, and is a constant re- 
minder of man’s anthropoid ancestry. All criminals are 
savages. 

God’s universe is one, and everything in it works with 
everything to promote the day of the Lord, when right- 
eousness shall fill the whole earth. 

“That little fire which glows, star-like, across the dark- 
growing moor, where the sooty smith bends over his anvil 
and thou hopest to replace thy lost horseshoe—is it a de- 
tached, separated speck, cut off from the whole universe, 
or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool! that 
smithy’s fire was primarily kindled at the Sun, is fed 
by air that circulates from before Noah’s deluge, from 
beyond the dogstar; therein with iron force and coal 
force and the far stronger force of man, are cunning 
affinities and battles and victories of force brought 
about; it is a little ganglion or nerve centre in the 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 183 


great vital system of immensity. * * * Detached! 
Separated! I say there is no such separation; nothing 
hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside, but all, were it only 
a withered leaf, works together with all; is borne forward 
on the bottomless, shoreless flood of action, and lives 
through perpetual metamorphoses.” 5 

The world is filled with wicked, weak and ignorant peo- 
ple, whom Carlyle called fools. So long as this condition 
exists, all sorts of foolish, and debasing and harmful be- 
liefs will infest the earth, and the exponents of these ab- 
surd beliefs will never fail to assure you that their inspira- 
tion is directly from God. 

Long before the Hebrews settled in Goshen, the Egyp- 
tian “Book of the Dead,” or the “Book of Redemption,” 
contained the moral code of the Egyptians, after which 
were copied the Ten Commandments, and out of which 
Moses formulated the moral code of Israel. The right 
and wrong, or good and evil which these moral codes de- 
fined were simply higher or lower ideals or conceptions 
of moral values. 

The moral law grew because the work of the world 
could not be carried on without it. It is the growth of 
ages, founded on human experience. The individual has 
inherited an ancestral experience which is the accumula- 
tion of hundreds of generations, to which is added the 
teachings of his immediate ancestors, and the teachings 
of the community in which he is reared. This in- 
dividual finds that his own safety and prosperity depend 
on the safety and prosperity of his country and his neigh- 
bors, and thus are developed patriotism and loyalty to 
friends and neighbors: he finds that he must do unto 
others as he would have others do unto him; in other 
words, that he must not be selfish, but must see that each 
individual about him receives his just due, and that he 
renders to his community and his country all that they 


5 Carlyle. 


184 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


require of him. This is unselfishness, which is all of 
morality. 

Morality is often buttressed by religion, which con- 
sists of service and love to man and veneration and love 
for God. It adds to the fear and respect in which these 
laws or rules of morality were held to attribute them to 
the direct command of God, or of some of the gods of 
paganism. 

“Tt is only after long ages of social discipline, fraught 
with cruel afflictions and grinding misery, that the moral 
law becomes dominant and religious aspiration intense and 
abiding in the soul. When such a stage is reached, we 
have at last in man a creature different in kind from his 
predecessors, and fit for an everlasting life of progress, 
for a closer and closer communion with God in beatitude 
that shall endure.” ® 

“Two things fill my mind with ever-renewed wonder 
and awe, the more often and deeper I dwell on them—the 
starry vault above me and the moral law within me.” ? 

“T assert as a biological fact that the moral law is as 
real and as external to man as the starry vault. It has no 
secure seat in any single man, or in any single nation. It 
is the work of the blood and tears of long generations of 
men. It is not in man inborn or innate, but is enshrined 
in his traditions, in his customs, in his literature and his 
religion. Its creation and sustenance are the crowning 
glory of man, and his consciousness of it puts him in a 
high place above the animal world.” ® 


“Not from a vain or shallow thought 
His awful Jove young Phidias brought, 
Out from the heart of nature rolled 
The burdens of the Bible old, 

The litanies of nations came 
Like the volcano’s tongue of flame, 
Up from the burning core below 


6 Through Nature to God, John Fisk, p. 53. 
7 Kaut. 
8 Chalmers Mitchell. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 185 


The canticles of love and woe, 

The word by seers or sibyls told 

In groves of oak or fanes of gold 
Still floats upon the morning wind, 
Still whispers to the willing mind, 
One accent of the Holy Ghost 

The heedless world has never lost.” ® 


The moral law grows, not only in the community and 
the race, but in the individual. That which we term in- 
nocence in the child develops into virtue in the strong man 
who is not only passively good but is willing to fight that 
which is evil, even to the death. So, too, vice and evil 
may be cultivated till they become a source of pleasure, 
and until the soul is dead in trespasses and sins. Even to 
think, with pleasure, of a bad action is wrong, and this 
continued thinking will make its eventual performance 
easy. 


“Vice is a monster of such frightful mien, 
That to be dreaded needs but to be seen, 
But seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.” 


That old pagan, Socrates, had a wonderful vision of 
the beauty of virtue, and of its beautifying effect upon the 
soul, and of the highest truths of modern evolution, when 
he was able to understand that virtue and wisdom and 
wealth were one. His prayer, which may be found at 
the close of Phedrus, is perhaps the most beautiful and 
sublime aspiration which paganism has produced: 


“Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give 
me beauty in the inward soul, and may the outward and inward 
man be at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and 
may I have such a quantity of gold as none but the temperate 
can carry.” 


The King James version of the Bible has had most to 
do with developing and promoting moral growth among 
English-speaking peoples. The following opinions of 


9 Emerson. 


186 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


Professor Huxley are of interest: “Consider the great 
historical fact that for three centuries the Bible has been 
woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in 
English history; that it has become the national epic of 
Britain, and is as familiar to gentie and simple people as 
Dante and Tasso once were to the Italian; that it is writ- 
ten in the noblest and purest English, and abounds in ex- 
quisite beauties of mere literary form; and, finally, that 
it forbids the veriest hind, who never left his village, to 
be ignorant of the existence of other countries and other 
civilizations, and of a great past stretching back to the 
furthest limits of the oldest nations in the world. By the 
study of what other book could children be so much 
humanized, and made to feel that each figure in that vast 
historical procession fills, like themselves, but a momen- 
tary space in the interval between the eternities ; and earns 
the blessings or the curses of all time, according to its 
efforts to do good, and hate evil, even as they also are 
earning their payment for their work.” 1° 

Our bodies were made to be the temple of the soul or 
spirit, which should be holy, and we can conceive of no 
other purpose for their existence. Moral and spiritual 
perfection are the ultimate ends for which all the cosmic 
processes have been working, and an “historical survey of 
the genesis of humanity seems to show very forcibly that 
a society of human souls living in conformity to a perfect 
moral law is the end towards which, ever since the time 
when our solar system was a patch of nebulous vapor, the 
cosmic process has been aiming.” 

The spirit, incubated in the matrix of Nature for mil- 
lions of years, finally came to birth in man. Some men 
develop that spirit and become worthy of immortality; 
what shall we say of others who, so far as we can per- 
ceive, remain animals all their lives, whose microscopic 
spirits never grow? Are they eventually scrapped, as un- 
fit for development, or will they be given a further chance 


10 Science and Christian Tradition, Huxley, p. 56. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 187 


in a future state? God is no economist and often throws 
away that which He has taken millions of years to make. 


“What place have they in the great scheme of things, 
To whom both place and time have been denied 

In which to win their victory, though they tried? 
Though in this world defeated and perplexed 

Will pitying God not heed them in the next?” 11 


“Nature, through the whole geological history of the 
earth, was gestative mother of spirit, which, after its long 
embryonic development came to birth and independent 
life and immortality in man. Is there any conceivable 
meaning in Nature without this consummation? The 
whole evolution of the cosmos through infinite time is a 
gestative process for the birth of spirit, a Divine method 
of the creation of spirits.” 4 

Properties or qualities are born or developed. Two 
elements, which in no way resemble each other, may unite 
to form a substance which does not resemble either of 
them. Hydrogen and oxygen unite to form water, like 
neither of them. Man is developed from a germ cell or 
a spermatozoa, a great tree from an insignificant seed, 
and immortality is developed in man when its beginnings, 
which are planted in him, have had time to germinate and 
grow. God is a Spirit, and that part of man which is 
immortal is a spirit. ‘Man is a child of God, capable of 
separate life; separate, but not independent of Nature: 
Nature is not for him any longer the gestative mother, but 
still the nursing mother of spirit. We are weaned by 
death. 

“‘Self-consciousness, especially, seems to me the simplest 
sign of separate entity or spirit individuality, and its ap- 
pearance among psychical phenomena the very act of 
spirit birth. We may imagine man to have emerged ever 
so gradually from animals: in this gradual development 


11 Bertha Waldo Van Blarcom. 
12 Evolution and Religious Thought, Joseph LeConte. 


188 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


the moment he became conscious of self, the moment he 
turned his thoughts inward in wonder upon himself and 
on the mystery of his existence as separate from Nature, 
that moment marks the birth of humanity out of animal- 
ity. All else characteristic of man followed as a neces- 
sary consequence. I am quite sure that if any animal, say 
a dog or a monkey, could be educated up to the point of 
self-consciousness (which, however, I am sure is impos- 
sible) that moment he (no longer it) would become a 
moral responsible being, and all else characteristic of 
moral beings would follow. At that moment would come 
personality, immortality, capacity of voluntary progress, 
and science, philosophy, religion would quickly follow.” 18 

The spirit which has been born in man is not material. 
Spiritual things must be spiritually discerned and are not 
necessarily governed by material laws, but by the laws of 
spirit. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
God,” not in a future state only, but in nature all about 
them. The ideal man, the perfect man, the divine man, 
will be developed as the perfection or result of spiritual 
evolution. He need not necessarily be all-wise or physi- 
cally perfect, but his spiritual nature will be perfect. Will 
this man ever be seen on this earth? He will. This per- 
fect man is not God. 

God is invisible to the material eye, as man is invisible. 
We see the works of God and the manifestations of His 
wisdom and power, but these eyes can never see Him. 
We never see our friends; they are hidden in the bodies 
which envelop them; they look out through their eyes and 
speak to us with their tongues; if the eye is destroyed, 
they cannot look out, if the tongue is paralyzed, they can- 
not speak, but our friends are there just the same. “The 
problem of the connection of body and soul is as insoluble 
in its modern form as it was in the pre-scientific ages.” 1* 

The time may come when the human mind will appre- 


13 Evolution and Religious Thought, Joseph LeConte, p. 323. 
14 Fragments of Science, Professor Tyndall, p. 88. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 189 


hend the rays of knowledge which are now outside its 
intellectual spectrum, and, by methods which at present 
we know not of, be able to analyze as clearly and use 
these extra—at present—knowable facts as it is now able 
to appreciate and often use the invisible rays of the solar 
spectrum. More than half the rays emanating from the 
sun are not visible to the eye, and, until recent centuries, 
their existence, separate from the light rays, was not un- 
derstood. Why may not rays of knowledge about the soul 
be darting all about us, which we have, as yet, no mental 
or spiritual apparatus to detect? 

Why may there not be horses of fire and chariots of 
fire, fighting the battles for righteousness as real as the 
bleeding armies which we see? A spiritual science may 
be developed which will be as real as the physical science 
of our century. That animal which has developed or 
evolved from the chattering anthropoid of the forests up 
to a Newton or a Galileo or a Shakespeare will not cease 
to develop and find out by searching many more of the 
ways of God. 

The existence of the ether of space is probably as in- 
dubitably proved as any scientific fact, but it has never 
been seen and no chemist has analyzed it. Its wonderful 
elasticity and its extreme tenuity are perhaps its only 
properties that science has thus far been able to appre- 
hend. It is supposed that light travels 196,000 miles per 
second by means of light waves propagated through this 
ether of the interstellar spaces, and radiant heat travels 
by the same method. Numerous electric and magnetic 
phenomena are also best explained by the theory of the 
presence of this ether which has so far eluded the search 
of scientists as to be still classed as imponderable. 

If, in the physical world, there are phenomena which 
prove to the thoughtful mind the presence of an im- 
ponderable substance, why should we doubt the presence, 
in the mental and spiritual world, of the soul of man, 


190 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


though no mortal has ever seen it, or felt or weighed it, 
and though it is known only by its manifestations? 

If we had no eyes, probably we should never know of 
the existence of light, or of any of the laws governing its 
transmission. For thousands of millenniums the sun and 
moon and stars were not to be seen from this planet, be- 
cause of the blanket. of watery vapor and carbonic acid 
gas which completely enveloped it; and, had there been a 
man upon the earth, he would never have suspected their 
existence. There are, indeed, more things in heaven and 
earth that are not dreamed of in our philosophies. 

At the present time a slight increase of moisture in our 
atmosphere would render the sun and moon and stars in- 
visible, and, as these bodies would then be outside the field 
of our experience, it would be natural for cautious peo- 
ple to deny their existence. 

Love is the finest product of evolution that we are able 
to apprehend. If there be anything finer or better, it has 
not yet been revealed to men, and we have no organs or 
senses which can apprehend or understand it. Love is 
the greatest thing in the world: it worketh no ill, and is 
the fulfilling of the law. “Though I speak with the 
tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am 
become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, and though 
I understand all mysteries and have all knowledge and 
all faith, if I have not love I am nothing; and though I 
give all my goods to feed the poor and my body to be 
burned, if I have not love, I am nothing. Love suffer- 
eth long, is not boastful, is not conceited; seeketh not her 
own pleasures; thinketh no evil; beareth all things ; hopeth 
all things; endureth all things.” Love is the one thing 
that shall abide when everything else that we know of 
shall pass away. God is love, and those spirits who have 
attained unto that perfection which is described above are 
surely near to God, and may stand among the seraphs 
around about His throne. 

These spirits of our fellow-mortals are contained in 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK IQI 


earthen vessels, and sometimes it is only these vessels that 
we love. Perhaps the visible body is the perfection of 
beauty in form and motion and color, and the brain which 
dominates it is capable of evolving the most beautiful and 
majestic thoughts, but if the soul within it is mean and 
low and selfish, it is unworthy of the undying affection 
of a soul which has evolved beyond the purely animal 
stage of its development. The love of the mother for her 
children is the most perfect example we have on earth of 
this Divine quality, because in it there is nothing selfish; 
the mother expects and receives nothing but affection in 
return for her love, and therein it is perfect. This con- 
ception of love as the greatest thing in the world, and as a 
reflection or prophetic type of what is to be experienced 
in the next stages of our existence, compels us to ignore 
or reject a major portion of the theology which has been 
taught us from our youth, as we are able to perceive that 
most of it is the invention of men, and entirely contrary 
to what God has written in this Book of His. “By faith 
we disbelieved and denied. By faith we said of that stuff- 
ed scarecrow of divinity, that incoherent accumulation of 
antique theological notions, the Nicene deity: ‘This is 
certainly not God’, and by faith we have found God.’ © 

As in the physical and intellectual world man has 
learned to live in communities and states and co-operate 
with his fellows for the general good, so in the higher 
development, where love is the chief attainment, man is 
learning to love his fellowman. “If a man love not his 
brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom 
he hath not seen?” The name of him who loves his fellow- 
men the most may head the list of those who love the 
Lord. This love for fellow-mortals should not be limited 
to a mental state, but should show itself in deeds of self- 
sacrifice, and devotion to the helpless, the needy, the ig- 
norant and the vicious. God is an inhabitant of these 
human temples, and we are given the inestimable privilege 


15 God, the Invisible King, H. G. Wells, p. 13. 


192 GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 


of ministering to Him, of feeding Him, clothing Him, 
visiting Him in sickness and in health, and of sympathiz- 
ing with Him in a world of troubles. ‘Inasmuch as ye 
did it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye did 
it unto Me.” 

The future should hold no terrors for him who has done 
the best he could; angels could do no more. And though 
his achievement may seem small, we must remember that 
with God there is nothing great or small; and that the 
widow who cast her mite into the treasury did more than 
all the rest, for she gave all that she had. 


“So live, that when thy summons comes 

a * * sf = * * Thou go not 

Like a quarry slave scourged to his dungeon; 

But sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust, 
Approach thy grave like one who wraps the drapery 

Of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.” 16 


God, who through countless millenniums was preparing 
this earth for the residence of man while he was under- 
going his preliminary training, or his kindergarten course, 
and who spent millions of years in building up the spirit- 
ual nature of man, will not forsake His child when he is 
promoted to a higher class, and, as a result, is separated 
from all the individuals and associations and experiences 
which he knows. Bryant, in the Water Fowl, beautifully 
expresses this idea of the leadership or guidance of God: 


“He who from zone to zone 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must go alone 

Will lead my steps aright.” 


When the soul has “shuffled off this mortal coil,” will 
the same laws of evolution, selection of kindred spirits 
by each other, and the survival of the fittest still prevail? 
It seems as though they might, though that is a question 


16 William Cullen Bryant. 


GOD IS WRITING A BOOK 193 


we cannot answer now. From that realm we are not yet 
prepared to admit that a traveler has returned, and the 
laws of spirit are yet to be found out. The science of 
spirit life is being carefully investigated by competent, 
earnest, pious men and women, and may we not hope 
that, as in other departments of science, they may find 
out, by searching, some of the laws of God which are 
operative in this spirit world? It is a scientific field which 
most of us are not competent to enter, and about the laws 
of which most of us are not fitted to express an opinion. 
It has been a belief in all civilizations, which is reflected 
in all the literature of the world, that certain people at 
certain times have been in direct communication with 
those who have passed beyond. Are we justified in calling 
it all superstition or imposture? 

Saul consulted the witch of Endor, and thought he re- 
ceived a message from Samuel, the departed seer: the 
chosen disciples, on the Mount of Transfiguration, wit- 
nessed and listened to a conversation between their Master 
and Moses and Elias: Paul was caught up to the seventh 
Heaven, and saw and heard things unspeakable: Joan of 
Arc listened to the voices: and more modern men, of 
whom Sir Oliver Lodge may be taken as the type, have 
assured us that repeatedly they have received messages 
from the dead. 

We need not necessarily be unbelievers because we are 
not able to believe. We must wait with an open mind. 
Most of us would better leave the investigation of this 
subject to others. “I recommend people in general to 
learn and realize that their loved ones are still active and 
useful and interested and happy; more alive than ever in 
one sense, and to make up their minds to live a useful life 
till they rejoin them.” }* 


17 Raymond, Sir Oliver Lodge, p. 342. 


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Princeton Theolo' 


| 


SRS 
ane ane SESS 
; ER ee 
SEAS NN == CONTE SSSA EAN 
Moab aw aeccucsaNnaaabsckuas dewacr ness ae ; AS SUS AE SES Seen egencasbone sess 
oe STEEL a SESE 
seeeyssnaeess Rabeatees SSS 
es . Riera 
<Uhass tates: Seatac SST 
SeaSes asso at acer ge aeese ERE LES OTST NS LSE SS 
WSS Sache See RE ES : : 
ENS SSS SSS SESS 
Sealacecauabthonantate a3 : S 
See ee eee : CoyNktec aT YN TNS COE as 
SN Sy esse yee ys eye rea Set ee Setreaeagueneee es . : hoses hase e 
AUTH SS SSA ND Ses, SStRS Atak Stee eine 
sae se sae yee eas STS 
ies varsay’ 3 
Sea eee ¢ 
errserss 
SSE 
SSeS 
Sabelal ees cacace tune 


St Sokaeaan cena 
Sees ‘ WERo RRL See EEE TR SOR 
SA Jeayeahe asses athe uch ee eae eae e! 
5 Sess Syueahtahtta ese 
SR TES SSE NES SSS LSS 
CRceNNaC AGA C Aa TAT S| ates . <s FLATS, 
=aeh Ae ¢: SANS NS - CANA ENA aa SS ~ 
SEAS SSS SVS 
: SNe Rent SS 
ENT RURL ACS AE RRGUREQeATENa eRe aT eE NS 
: ets 
Sees: 
Mayas 
SS 


oS SSS 
EATS SENSES SSS S : SASS 
SS . Sse CERES CESS 
Tthkte 3 = eee SENSES SRS 
SN RAN 
rasan a Nas: aegee ses SS 
Roy Seer < Se SIS 
erecstace aces: SRA Goee eek te 
SARE RE 


NOS 
SAAS 


Sees 


= RAEN RANE SNA Q 
Sashak whens tcp hopes ATS Rea 
- ¥ ahaa Ss Te SO 
Wek since: Ante ts REE ak ca cane - Weed once eaSAU RS NUS OROEERL NURS NONE NS 
abe aaa aaah 
ae 
a 
ate lasawaeneespe ee 
~\- eee eR eee abate wey . 


SEN 
SERS 





. a SSNS 
ALY, S : SS 
m Eten SS SHEN : : Ses 
aes au NS . es “3 
See SANS REINS RRS a 
NS Ree Sassen SS eee 
RARER EN ATES SAA FAT ATAS : CREE ee NT 


